Rachel Rudacille `26 and shabab m. kabir `26 have been selected as two of 40 Watson Fellows nationwide for 2026-27. The Watson Fellowship, founded in 1968, grants students $40,000 to pursue personal projects abroad over the course of a year. 

Rudacille’s project, “Community as a Catalyst for Climate Action,” will focus on global community-based climate resilience efforts. “Sonic Materiality & A Baul-Fakir’s Coloured Hearings,” kabir’s project, will follow global music communities through the framework of sonic materiality, investigating sound’s texture, weight and spatial depth as it interacts with the environment.

Ann Landstrom, assistant dean and director of global fellowships and awards, said this is the ninth time since 2000 that two or more Grinnell students have been selected for the award. 

“The interest in their topic has to come from something that’s not just popped up in the last couple years. It’s got to be something that’s pretty deep seated,” said Landstrom.

Rudacille said their interest in climate and environmental justice began in childhood, when their family raised and released monarch butterflies. At Grinnell, they’ve continued their interest by majoring in physics with a concentration in environmental studies, leading a local chapter of Citizens’ Climate Lobby and working with a variety of food security organizations.

“I’ve observed how they connect with others in the community, how they bring interest to their organization and then how, on a town level, those organizations function together. I think that really informed the questions that I was asking as I was preparing the Watson,” they said.

Rudacille plans to travel to the United Kingdom, Denmark, Kenya, Mozambique and Kiribati to study the unique climate challenges faced by each country’s environments and the varied community responses to those challenges.

“I’m interested in energy policy and connecting that with science, but that’s a very broad goal,” they said. 

“So I think a lot of the Watson will really inform what I see the issues as being, especially since those differ across the globe. I really only have experience here in the Midwest with that, but I also think it will inform what I see as possible solutions.”

As an independent major in mathematical physics and sonic materiality and digital studies concentrator, kabir said they plan to combine their research interests in physics, gender and sexuality studies and music throughout their Watson year.

As the resident artist at Grin Cupola, kabir’s senior thesis will be a performance ritual to become a Baul-Fakir, a Bangladeshi folk mystic, which ties well into their Watson plans.

“Baul-Fakirs, after their initial ritual, they’re sort of expelled out, and they’re meant to go on a journey for a year to cultivate their own sonic mysticisms, their own philosophy in different spiritual and mystical contexts,” said kabir.

They will travel between Japan, Italy, Brazil, Zimbabwe, New Zealand, Iceland and Indonesia, working with contacts in each country to explore global soundscapes and combat colonial narratives of music. 

They said they were inspired to visit Indonesia and Zimbabwe because of their involvement in Grinnell’s Balinese Sound Ensemble and Zimbabwean Mbira group, while many of the other countries were chosen after they reached out to establish connections with musicians and scholars working in each one.

A committee of Grinnell professors selected four Watson nominees from a pool of 11 total applicants in the fall semester, said Landstrom. They were then entered into a national selection process where 155 nominees from 41 participating colleges were interviewed, she said. 

Nominees are chosen based on a rigorous application and interview process as they develop their project proposals. Landstrom advises and helps students with their applications. 

For kabir, this opportunity to combine and explore their varied interests was just the first step to their future plans.

“After the Watson, I imagine my life going in multiple directions simultaneously, all entangled. I plan to pursue a PhD in quantum science, so that’s definitely one goal. But I also do plan to cultivate myself as a Baul-Fakir, a sonic mystic, and in doing so, improving my own musical craft,” kabir said. “At the same time, I do imagine myself being an independent scholar still.”

Rudacille said they were excited for the international perspectives their Watson year will bring.

“Climate is hard work, so it’s going to be a hard project, but I think I’m going to be so inspired by everyone I meet,” said Rudacille. “I’m sure that there’s going to be so many things that I have never tried or heard of before that are just going to be wonderful to learn about and to be able to take with me.”