Kustin, Bridget S.

(Doctoral Candidate, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland) Bridget Kustin is a doctoral student of anthropology at Johns Hopkins University, where she studies theologies of money, specifically Islamic banking and finance in Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia. With the assistance of Bangladesh’s largest Islamic bank, she is currently examining Islamic micro-investment against broader questions of development, capitalism, nationalism, and notions of social justice and risk in Islam. Previously, she served as the South Asia Researcher for the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a federal, bipartisan agency providing foreign policy recommendations to the President, Congress, and Secretary of State. As a 2005-06 Fulbright Islamic Civilization Award recipient and Fulbright scholar to Bangladesh, Bridget studied U.S.-funded initiatives to increase the participation of Islamic religious leaders in community development programs. She was a 2006-07 Bengali Language Fellow of the American Institute of Indian Studies, and her graduate work and field research in Bangladesh has been supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship, the American Institute of Bangladesh Studies, and the Johns Hopkins-based Institute of Global Studies and Program for Women, Gender, and Sexuality. In 2012, she will be an Irmgard Coninx Foundation research fellow in residence at the Social Science Research Center, Berlin. Bridget received her BA from Whitman College.