The Jerome and Hazel Tobis Fellows were established in 2010 to honor the professional integrity, concern for social justice, and humanitarianism of Jerome Tobis, a founding member of the Ethics Center. Tobis Fellows will be awarded to young scholars including nontenured junior faculty, post-doctoral students, and post-baccalaureate students -- who are beginning their careers and are concerned with moral issues as they construct their own professional lives. The honorific fellowships offer an intellectual community, involvement in scholarly projects with other Ethics Center faculty, and professional mentoring for those interested in ethical concerns in any of the fields represented at the Ethics Center.  Interested applicants should send a description of themselves, with their GPA, major, minor and school along with a 2 paragraph description of their substantive interests to Marilu Daum at daumm@uci.edu. We have rolling admissions and, in general, we collect the applications and evaluate them in April. Candidates who are accepted as Tobis Fellows for the next academic year are notified in May. If spots remain available, late admissions are sometimes made.
Contributions to the Tobis Fellowship program may be made via the e-giving link (at left on website) or directly to Sylvia Lotito, Center Manager, Social Science Plaza A, UCI, Irvine, CA 92697. 

Tobis Fellow Lina Kreidie chosen as Fulbright Scholar

2017 Tobis Fellows
LYNDSEY CHRISTOFFERSEN
Interested in human trafficking, immigration, gender issues, and community collaboration. As a Tobis Fellow at the Center, she will be writing the book "After Slavery: Stories of Survival After a Life in Human Trafficking". As cofounder of the Long Beach Human Trafficking Task Force and member of the City of Long Beach Violence Prevention Plan Steering Committee; her works centers on understanding how local communities address global issues such as human trafficking. (CV)

ANDRADA COSTOIU
Andrada Costou obtained her Masters in Political Science in December 2008 and she is currently completing a Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago with a specialization in International Relations and Comparative Politics. Her thesis analyzes the deportation policy in United States. She is part of a social sciences evaluation team within the Executive Agency for Higher Education Research Development and Innovation Funding (UEFISCDI). In this function she evaluated projects by research partners from three EFTA States (Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein) and Romania.
As a Tobis Fellow Andrada Costoiu is involved in a project developed by the Center of Ethics and Morality that centers on the psychological effects of war on people who were displaced as result of war. In the past two years she conducted fieldwork in Jordan where she interviewed Syrian war refuges.  (CV)
PAULA GARB
Co-Founder and former Director of the University of California Irvine's Center for Citizen Peacebuilding, and co-founder of UCI's Olive Tree Initiative. She has been a lecturer in cultural anthropology and conflict analysis and resolution since 1990. Since 1995, she has facilitated citizen peacebuilding activities and conducted research on peacebuilding efforts between Abkhaz and Georgians, and since 2008, between South Ossetians and Georgians. She has conducted comparative case studies of Israeli-Palestinian, Cyprus, Northern Ireland, and South Caucasus citizen peacebuilding efforts. She has authored books, book chapters, and journal articles presenting the results of her research.  
During her time as a Tobis Fellow she researchers and writes a book about how the lives of a multigenerational family have woven in and out of Russian, Soviet and US history, and how their journeys through war and peace resulted in lessons learned in moral courage, forgiveness and reconciliation.  (CV)
ANGELIKI KAVANOU
Her research interests are informed by her conviction that peace does not start when agreements are signed but only when conditions of structural violence are addressed and eliminated. 
 

LINA KREIDIE
Dr. Kreidie is a 2017-18 US Fulbright scholar in Jordan. Kreidie has been a lecturer of political psychology, Middle East politics, conflict management and resolution, peace studies since 2000. Kreidie's academic, professional and consultancy experience included but not limited to a political advisor to prime minister of Lebanon Mr. Najib Mikati 2010-2013. Director, Middle East Prospect Forum Beirut Lebanon 2010-2012, Director of Middle East Studies Student Initiative, UC Irvine: 2007-2011.  Among Kreidie's publications Living with Ongoing Political Trauma: The Prevalence and Impact of PTSD among Syrian Refugees; The Role of non- Governmental Organizations in Tackling Sectarianism and Extremism in Lebanon: Track Two Diplomacy and Good Governance; The Rise of Iran: An Identity Fight to Challenge the Existing Power Establishment Contesting US Hegemony, Israeli, and Sunni Powers in the Middle East. (CV)

KATRIN TRAVOUILLON
Katrin Travouilon (Ph.D Political Science, Philipp University Marburg) is a Cambodia researcher whose work focuses on the transformation of the country's political system after the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia 1992-93. She aims to contribute to a better understanding of the dynamics of local-national-international interactions that evolved as a result of this mission and their power to shape perceptions of political institutions. Her research draws on extensive archival and field research conducted in Cambodia, France, and the United States. Her articles have appeared or are about to appear in journals of international relations, peacebuilding and state building.  As a Tobis Fellow Katrin Travouillon works on a book manuscript that discusses the transformation of public political discourse in post-intervention Cambodia.  (CV)

RINA WILLIAMS
Her research concerns women's participation in religious nationalist—including conservative, right-wing, and sometimes violent—politics. Can such participation be empowering or liberating for women? To deny it seems to deny women agency and rationality, but to support it remains anathema for many feminist scholars and activists. As a Tobis Fellow she is working on a book manuscript that explores this question by tracing women's participation in the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party ("Indian People's Party," or BJP) in India across three time periods from the early 1900s up to the current day.  (CV)
  

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