Stephanie McClure, a doctoral student in the Department of Anthropology, supervised by assistant professor Eileen Anderson-Fye, has been awarded two highly competitive and prestigious fellowships for the 2011-12 academic year: the Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship and the Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellowship. For each fellowship, McClure was selected out of pools of more than 500 applicants.
For her dissertation research, McClure conducted an innovative ethnographic study of body conceptualization and physical activity engagement with a group of African-American teen girls. She employed a variety of methods, including interviewing, direct observation, collage-building and electronic activity monitoring with accelerometers in her search to gain insight into the ways that local cultural context can shape physical activity behavior. McClure’s project contributes to policy development and intervention around obesity prevention as well as nuanced understanding of adolescent life contexts.