Three Carleton seniors have been awarded Watson Fellowships for exploration abroad.
Mitch Porter ’25, Jonah Docter-Loeb ’25, and Victoria Semmelhack ’25 will spend a year traveling the globe while exploring environmental memory, connections between beavers and conservation goals, and maternal healthcare policy, respectively. The full article was posted on 5/22 in Carleton Today.
History major, Victoria Semmelhack will travel to Ghana, India, Australia, and Norway to explore childbirth knowledge and maternal healthcare policy.
“My content is structured around two main themes,” she said. “The first is looking at how Indigenous childbirth knowledge and the more westernized hospital-based system interact. All four countries have a long history of colonization and I’m really intrigued by how that manifests itself in their actual birth practices.”
“Another component is the rural aspect of it,” she added. “A lot of these populations are located in really rural locations, and these countries have a difficult time getting adequate maternal healthcare to them. I’m looking at how these countries provide that and the challenges in these rural areas.”
Semmelhack has had a long-running interest in birth.
“It’s this fascinating intersection of a variety of different aspects of society,” she said. As a double major in history and sociology and anthropology, she challenged herself to end every term with a final project related to birth.
“I was able to study the topic of birth across a variety of time periods, cultures, and societies,” she said. “The Watson Fellowship just felt like a really natural extension of that personal challenge of mine; and a really fun one at that, because I love traveling and seeing new things.”
While researching birth experiences in southern Appalachia for her senior comps project, Semmelhack discovered the value of talking with people about the topic and immersing herself in the field.
“The experience made me really excited for the Watson, where the whole year is just talking to people and meeting people,” she said. “There’s no better way to learn about this topic.”
Semmelhack said her ultimate goal is to affect maternal healthcare policy in the United States, and she plans to pursue a PhD in public health or sociology.
“This is an experience that will definitely show me whether or not this is the path that I should pursue, and I don’t think it will show me otherwise,” she said. “I’m excited to bolster my excitement for pursuing higher education and policy work.”