Kristen Ghodsee, Bowdoin’s John S. Osterweis Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies, has been awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship to Assist Research and Artistic Creation. As a Guggenheim Fellow, Ghodsee will be investigating the history of the communist-era Bulgarian women’s movement and its influential role among progressive African women between 1968 and 1990.

“I am honored that the Guggenheim Foundation is willing to fund my research,” says Ghodsee, one of fewer than 200 scholars, artists and scientists from North America chosen from among 3,000 applicants. “When we think of global feminism today, we only think about the influence of Western feminism, but there was a lot of activism that was inspired by women in state socialist countries.” Watch Ghodsee’s research trailer: