2008 Scholarships
Carolyn McAndrews
The Scholarship Committee of SWEA San Francisco has chosen Carolyn McAndrews as the recipient of one of the 2008 SWEA San Francisco scholarships, for her project consisting of a study of road safety in Sweden, comparing it with practices in Mexico and the United States.
Carolyn McAndrews is a doctoral student in City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley. For her dissertation project she has begun a study of work on traffic safety in Stockholm, Guadalajara, and San Francisco. Motor vehicle accidents are a leading cause of death in both the United States and in Mexico, whereas the safety record is much better in many other countries with similar infrastructures and vehicles, such as Sweden.
McAndrews' goal is to ascertain how road safety can be achieved through science, technology, and policy. She proposes to carry out her research through extensive interviews with engineers, public health experts, urban planners and designers and law enforcement professionals, and to present a quantitative analysis of the traffic safety record for each of the chosen sites. The Swedish part of the investigation will take place during spring 2009
Carolyn McAndrews' work is essential because it can lead to an overall increase in traffic safety, but it is also important that Sweden is included as a model of road safety. McAndrews has already presented her research at several conferences and contributed to research reports and publications, and we are confident that her work will also serve to spread knowledge of Sweden around the world.
Thomas K. Johnson
The SWEA San Francisco Scholarship Committee, SWEA San Francisco has chosen Thomas K. Johnson as the recipient of one of the 2008 SWEA San Francisco scholarships, for his project to finish a dissertation in Scandinavian ethnology. In this dissertation he will present translations into English of older Swedish books on magic and discuss popular beliefs concerning folk healers ("kloka gubbar, kloka gummor") and their position in society.
Thomas K Johnson is a doctoral student at the Department of Scandinavian Studies of the University of Washington, Seattle, and he has previously been a student at the Department of Scandinavian at the University of California, Berkeley. He has also been a visiting scholar at the Department of Ethnology at Stockholm University, which has enabled him to secure unique source materials consisting of books of magic containing recipes, prayers and rituals from the 18th-20th centuries. As they were written in Swedish, they have not previously been accessible to international researchers, Johnson has acquired an excellent knowledge of Swedish and has not only been able to use the material himself but has also created an important source for work in comparative ethnology and Swedish history through his translations into English.
SWEA San Francisco's scholarship will support the final stages of Thomas K. Johnson's work and ensure its completion.
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