KEVIN MCGLOTHLIN
1989-90 Traveling Fellow
Art, Politics and Economics in Indigenous Communities
Kevin’s project was an exploration of the way in which sale of art by indigenous people shaped economic realities for the sellers and perceptions both of sellers and buyers.
Majors: Anthropology and Spanish
Kevin is a Humanitarian and Development Counselor at US Mission to the UN Agencies in Rome, where he provides oversight of humanitarian assistance policy and programs, including food security policy as relates to larger USAID development issues. Prior to this, he spent many years of his career with USAID, working as a Director of Economic Growth in Islamabad, Pakistan and a Food for Peace Officer in Washington, D.C.
Following his Keegan Fellowship, Kevin received his Master’s of Public Administration from Princeton University.
“I wouldn’t be who I am today without the Fellowship… it would be impossible to overemphasize the impact it had on my life and career, and I will always be grateful for the experience.”
— Kevin McGlothlin, 1989-90
ITINERARY
French Polynesia
Cook Islands
Fiji
New Zealand
Australia
Indonesia
Hong Kong
China
Thailand
Malaysia
Singapore
TRAVEL STORIES
In Fiji, the family I stayed with went out of their way to help me experience religious traditions I was unfamiliar with. Through their friends, I went for the first time to a mosque and to Sikh and Hindu temples and learned the basics of those faith traditions.
In Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo, I hiked for three days to reach a village of Dayak Bukit people living in a traditional 'long house' near primary rain forest. I thought I had never been to such a remote place, but the first evening I was there, the entire village gathered around a shortwave radio to see whether the lottery ticket someone had brought back from town the week before, was a winner.
In northeast Thailand, a professor at the university told me to hop in the car and proceeded to drive me thirty miles to a village where traditional silk weavers were producing cloth for the national market. He neglected to tell me where we were going until we got there, however, or to take a change of clothes or a toothbrush, so I had to make do in the village for a few days until he came back to pick me up. Lesson — always take your toothbrush…