Reshmaan Hussam, Soros Fellowship Recipient

This is the fourth installment of our series of profiles of Muslim recipients of Paul and Daisy Fellowships.

Reshmaan Hussam  is the daughter of Bangladeshi immigrants to this country.  She was born in Virginia and graduated from MIT as a Burchard Scholar (a member of the Institute’s interdisciplinary honors program) in 2009 with a major in economics. She has undertaken empirical and interview-based research on such subjects as teenage pregnancy, dowries and independence of women in financial decisions, and the effects of patriarchy on the implementation of micro-credit.  She has also taken leadership roles in MIT’s interfaith dialogue group and the MIT Muslim Students Association.  She served as a youth columnist for America’s Muslim Family Magazine and an editor of a Cambridge-wide journal on Islam and society, Ascent Magazine. Beginning in the Fall of 2010, she will pursue a PhD in developmental economics.

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