Houck and Ansari, PhD students, further their dissertation research abroad

Olivia Wynne Houck and Natasha Ansari are the recipients of a Summer Study Grant awarded by the MIT Center for International Studies. 

The grant provides critical funding for PhD students pursuing research in international affairs. 

Houck is a PhD candidate in the History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture program and Ansari is a PhD candidate in the Urban Studies and Planning department. 

The formation of NATO and the built environment 

Houck said the grant would help fund three weeks of research and travel expenses to Brussels, Belgium, where she’ll immerse herself in the NATO Archives. Examining documents there will give her the understanding needed to complete the final three chapters of her dissertation, Concrete Security: NATO as a Territorial Project (1940-1960). 

"To get to meet the archivists with whom I've worked over email for several years now in person and to build my network of academic relationships is also absolutely critical," Houck shared. 

Grounded in a study of the built environment, Houck's project looks at the formation of NATO in the Postwar period and how a diverse group of countries came together under a single alliance but had to negotiate internal politics and the construction of military bases in order to truly collaborate.

"I study how these countries learned to collaborate," Houck explained. "There are weapons and intelligence-sharing, and questions of economics, but there is also a question about how much each country wants to let other nations establish a foreign presence on their soil." 

Inside the NATO Archives, Houck will search through documents of the Regional Planning Group and committee notes on the issue of establishing military bases on foreign soil during the first five years of the Alliance's policy and planning. But she'll also be exploring a retro 1957 NATO cookbook, Best of Taste, authored by diplomats' wives. It was anera in which officials were all presumably male and their spouses were presumably allwomen who didn't work outside their own homes. 

Houck said, "When I first discovered this cookbook, it prompted an exercise in exploring the visual culture that NATO was producing in the era to tell the public its origin story and convey the purpose of its formation. It published an incredible number of pamphlets, maps, and brochures printed in that same era for people of all ages. I plan to spend time reading everything I can find and eventually write a book about it." 

Community care for individuals with profound disabilities in South Africa's informal settlements 

Ansari used her grant to expand her ongoing dissertation fieldwork in South Africa last summer. For the past three years, she has spent time on the ground in a resource-scarce informal settlement outside the urban township of Soweto, trying to determine ways that those living with profound intellectual disabilities can still have a voice and agency in participatory processes related to planning their own lives.

This built on Ansari's related MA fieldwork, in which her observational research honed in on a minor with severe intellectual disabilities who resided in the informal settlement with five siblings supported by a single mother. 

"What I saw was that neighbors and other community members regularly step in to care for this individual. This individual was known by name throughout the community and not invisible or isolated." Ansari, who has a background working for  research consultancies and not-for-profits in the international development and social justice arenas, concluded that even though the family didn't have access to all of the social protection they needed from the state, their kinship structures created a strong support system. 

The prize allowed Ansari to expand that research by working in additional communities, first by shadowing a Gauteng Association of People with Disabilities social worker on her rounds. Her summer also included visits with the Centre for Augmentative and Alternative Communication, based in Pretoria, an organization based at the University of Pretoria that has developed research methodologies for respectfully and competently engaging with those with intellectual disabilities. The fieldwork proved pivotal to her forthcoming dissertation. 

Monuments and mobility 

For both Ansari and Houck, this research is personal–and that's what makes them so committed to conducting it. 

Houck grew up outside Washington, DC, with a history buff for a father. "I have learning disabilities, and though I loved history, I wasn't able to easily sit and read a textbook as a kid," she shared. But when the pair began exploring local monuments and cemeteries, it ignited a passion in Houck for the built environment. 

"I realized you could walk through any city, read the buildings, and learn about its history. The city becomes your text, and you can engage with it if you understand the materials and their contexts."

After obtaining a bachelor's in Art History from William & Mary and an MA in Architectural History from the University of Virginia, Houck received a diploma in Small States Studies from the University of Iceland. It was in Europe that she began to focus on the archival research of monuments, power, and the state with an entry point to NATO through research on the Alliance’s work in the Arctic. Knowing that she wanted to go into academia while also keeping one foot in the policy world, Houck was drawn to MIT for its support of interdisciplinary scholarship. 

"At MIT, I've received the training to become a rigorous historian but also learned to think and write for international relations audiences," Houck said. "I want to thank my advisors, Timothy Hyde and Arindam Dutta, and the writing coaches at the MIT Writing Center for investing in me." 

Ansari is from Karachi, Pakistan, "a city that is extremely economically stratified and ethnically diverse." Her younger brother had profound disabilities.The metropolis, like many other urban environments, was hard to navigate for her brother and for others with disabilities. "Because of my personal familial experience, I was closely attuned to issues of mobility and how they are tied to questions of belonging and alienation in a city," Ansari said. 

Returning to Karachi after completing her bachelor's in Economics at Mount Holyoke College Ansari engaged in a series of activist efforts to address issues around women’s mobility and lack of access to public space.Knowing that she wanted to ultimately research, write, and teach alongside her community organizing efforts, Ansari applied to the Department of Urban Studies at MIT because of its reputation for supporting scholars with roots in social justice. 

Much of Ansari's research and her work as a founding member of the MIT Disability and Justice Planning Group is driven by her commitment to social justiceand furthering research and policy when it comes to disability and questions of care and voice. 

"I've found mentors, colleagues, and friends here," Ansari said. "The culture of collaboration at MIT can be electric. It's not hierarchical, and there is an ecosystem of support." 

To learn more, please visit the CIS Student Research Grants page or email questions to cis-info@mit.edu.