Suzanne Freeman and Mariel Garcia-Montes receive 2023 Jeanne Guillemin Prize

Award from the Center for International Studies supports women pursuing doctorates in international affairs. Suzanne Freeman and Mariel Garcia-Montes are the recipients of this year's Jeanne Guillemin Prize at the Center for International Studies (CIS). The prize provides financial support to women studying international affairs, a field that has long been dominated by men. Jeanne Guillemin, a veteran colleague at CIS, endowed the fund shortly before her death in 2019. An authority on biological warfare, one of her important investigations exposed the Soviet Union's role in the 1979 lethal anthrax outbreak in the city of Sverdlovsk, now Yekaterinburg. "As a woman who studies the Soviet Union and Russia today, it is especially meaningful to get this award," says Freeman, who is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science, and a student at the Security Studies Program (SSP) where Guillemin had served as a senior advisor. "Dr. Guillemin was a trailblazer for women, international security, and also someone who shared an interest in the region that I study, including the abuses of justice in the Soviet government." Garcia-Montes, a student in the doctoral program in History, Anthropology, Science, Technology and Society (HASTS), described special significance, too, in being awarded the prize: "I'm really moved to be a recipient of the Jeanne Guillemin prize because of her contribution to international affairs research, but also because of the origins of the prize - to help support women in academia.