Jennifer Estes

Jennifer Estes is a doctoral student in Cultural Anthropology. She holds a BA in Drama and the Comparative History of Ideas from the University of Washington. Prior to beginning her graduate studies, she worked in a public high school in Kampot Province, Cambodia with the Peace Corps. Jennifer’s dissertation project will examine how ideas about the nation-state, civic participation, and development are produced by various politically motivated stakeholders in Cambodian public schools, and how youths’ imaginaries are shaped by their own reworking of these ideas. In particular, she is interested in whether dominant discourses about national belonging effectively exclude Cambodia’s ethnic minorities from membership in the nation-state or serve to incorporate these groups. This summer she will conduct interviews with Ministry of Education officials, high school directors and teachers, and former students both in the capital city, Phnom Penh, and in Ratanakiri Province.