Saleh Ahmed, an assistant professor in the School of Public Service, and global studies students Kaitlyn Bellamy, Victoria Garcia and Adriana Archila published an article in the Journal of Poverty. The journal explores contemporary forms of poverty within a global and societal context. Bellamy, Garcia and Archila were students in Ahmed’s class Social and Political Change in the Global South. The article began as a class project. Bellamy, a senior global studies major from Boise, was the lead author.
The article focuses on the Garifuna, a group in Honduras descended from African slaves and the Indigenous peoples of the region, and their struggles to own land.
Ahmed regularly partners with his students to research and write articles. It’s motivation for students to become strong writers and researchers, he said, and to leave Boise State with a publication on their resumes. Ahmed called Bellamy “an exceptional student.” He and Bellamy are in the process of publishing two additional papers with more in the pipeline.
For Bellamy, the best part of the project was collaboration. Though she was lead author, the project would not have happened without her peers, she said. “As an English-speaking Boise native, I was the outsider. Victoria and Adriana speak Spanish, and Adriana is from Honduras. Getting to write from this new perspective was fascinating and changed how I do my work.”
When Bellamy came to Boise State, she intended to study political science. Taking Ahmed’s global studies class, researching and celebrating her first publication changed her course of study. “It was transformative,” she said.
Coming full circle
Saleh Ahmed, whose research concerns how ethnic minorities and Indigenous people in different parts of the world find resources to cope with environmental hazards, added the Journal of Poverty article to the reading list for his current class, giving student authors a true audience of their peers.
By Anna Webb