Canadian Studies is pleased to announce that Haikun Liu has been awarded an undergraduate research fellowship to conduct fieldwork in Canada this August. His fellowship will expand upon his previous work, an empirical examination of the 'altruism' of Canadian Official Development Assistance to Sub-Saharan Africa, which was awarded the 2023 Ross Prize in Canadian Studies.
Haikun's project seeks to supplement the "countercyclical donation" model he has developed with a rhetorical analysis of the language surrounding aid. His fellowship will support archival research in Ottawa, where he will consult official documents produced by the Canadian International Development Agency. Haikun will compare the use of altruistic language in these documents with the empirical outcomes of Canadian government aid allocation over the period of 2010 to 2020. By gaining a better understanding of the motivations behind foreign aid, Haikun's research will seek to hold nations accountable to their apparent claims on the stage of international development.
Haikun is a senior at UC Berkeley, studying economics, data science, and politics. He is interested in economic development, economic history, and the role of foreign aid in developing countries. Prior to starting his undergraduate studies at Berkeley, Haikun attended high school in Toronto and developed a passion for economic development through his volunteer experiences. While at Berkeley, Haikun has gained research experience under professors Edward Miguel and Brad DeLong (both Dept. of Economics). He is currently the Anne H. Scott Memorial Scholar at the Institute of East Asian Studies, and has also served as a Fellow at the Institute of International Studies.