Four recent graduates awarded Labouisse Prize for international civic engagement projects

Princeton University graduates Beatriz Alcala-Ascencion ‘25, Gustavo Blanco-Quiroga ‘25, Thomas Coulouras ‘25 and Alan Plotz ‘25 were awarded the Henry Richardson Labouisse 1926 Prize to pursue international civic engagement projects for one year following graduation.

Alcala-Ascencion, an anthropology major, will document the contributions of traditional midwives in Cusco and Tarapoto, Peru through photography. Blanco-Quiroga, a sociology major, will scale up totora plantations and conducting phytoremediation to reduce contamination in Uru Uru Lake in Bolivia. Coulouras, a sociology major, will travel to Mexico City to support reintegration and resettlement work in the city for those who have returned, including those deported from the United States. Plotz, a School of Public and International Affairs major, will document the abuse of migrants at the hands of border patrol agents on the U.S.-Mexico border. 

The Labouisse Prize, which awards $35,000 to each recipient, enables graduating seniors to engage in a project that exemplifies the life and work of Henry Richardson Labouisse, a 1926 Princeton alumnus who was a diplomat, international public servant and champion for the causes of international justice and international development. Labouisse’s daughter Anne Peretz and family established the prize in 1984. It is administered by the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS).

“As nations worldwide increase barriers to international experiences, opportunities such as the Labouisse Fellowship to spend a year of service abroad become increasingly critical to foster world-wide cooperation,” said Emmanuel Kreike, professor of history and chair of the Labouisse selection committee. “This year we are supporting four graduating seniors to realize their self-designed dream projects in different parts of Latin America as aiding Princeton-in-Asia's and Princeton-in-Africa's to maintain their important work to make our planet more livable for all of humanity.”

Beatriz Alcala-Ascencion

Alcala-Ascencion will travel to Peru, where she will work in collaboration midwife Ruro Caituro Monge, founder of Ruruchay Casa de Nacimiento, an organization dedicated to providing alternative, home-based birthing services. In photographs, Alcala-Ascencion will document two midwives’ lives. “Despite their importance, indigenous midwives face significant challenges, including lack of formal recognition from the government, social stigma and verbal threats from healthcare providers who view their practices as unsafe or irresponsible,” Alcala-Ascencion said. 

During her time at Princeton, Alcala-Ascencion minored in global health and health policy and Latin American studies, and analyzed how alternative forms of healthcare, such as traditional midwifery, empower women to make informed decisions about their reproductive health. She interned at Child Family Health in Bolivia and UNESP Medical School in Brazil, where she shadowed pediatricians, gynecologists and family health physicians and learned about the socioeconomic and cultural barriers faced by populations in resource-poor areas. Her involvement with Princeton Students for Reproductive Justice and the Emergency Contraceptive Hotline on campus “further strengthened my commitment to advocating for systems that ensure equitable access to reproductive healthcare,” she said. After her fellowship, Alcala-Ascencion hopes to earn degrees in public health and medicine, and to specialize in obstetrics and gynecology. 

“Beatriz attentive ethnographic eye is keenly aware of the need to pay renewed attention to the work of those in front lines of the struggle for reproductive justice, highlighting their life-saving labor and bringing it closer to broader populations,” said Sebastián Ramírez Hernández, director of Service Focus at the John H. Pace Jr. Center for Civic Engagement. “Her project will help shed light onto the invaluable work being done in Peru and inspire others to rethink how childbirth can be approached in Latin America and beyond.” 

Gustavo Blanco-Quiroga

Blanco-Quiroga’s ongoing work focuses on restoring Uru Uru Lake through innovative phytoremediation — which uses plants to remove contaminants in water —using native totora plants. As a teenager, he and his community cleaned the ancient lake themselves, planting totora along its banks and achieving a 30% reduction in water contamination. The Labouisse Prize will allow Blanco-Quiroga to scale his efforts in partnership with the Vito community of Ayllu Villa Challacollo, stewards of the lake. “The ultimate goal is to create a replicable model for high-altitude lake restoration in the Andes,” he said. “This model will not only protect vulnerable communities but also serve as a crucial defense against climate change.”

The Indigenous concept of jach'a reciprocidad (reciprocity) has shaped Blanco-Quiroga’s professional journey, he explained. Prior to his time at Princeton, he organized large-scale tree-planting campaigns in his city and established the first library at his public school with donations from the U.S. Embassy. His passion for service continued at Princeton: He received a Project for Peace grant, which he used to address gender inequality through entrepreneurship among 25 young Indigenous men in Bolivia. As a PIIRS Undergraduate Fellow, he guided a group of his peers to Lake Uru Uru over Wintersession to clean the lake using the techniques pioneered by his indigenous community.

In a national TV interview, Blanco-Quiroga, who earned minors in entrepreneurship and Latin American studies, pledged that his education would always uplift Indigenous communities in Bolivia. “This promise remains central to my mission,” he said. “Restoring Lake Uru Uru will advance my career in environmental advocacy while preserving the sacred connections between Indigenous communities and the natural world.”

Thomas Coulouras

Coulouras’s senior thesis explored how socioemotional and economic support are distributed within social networks of Mexicans who lived in the United States and have been deported or forcibly returned to Mexico. He will apply what he learned through action during his fellowship year. Coulouras will partner with Comunidad en Retorno — an organization in Mexico City promoting reintegration and resettlement for expatriates — to identify pressing needs, contribute to bringing families together, connect individuals with jobs, and help to locate and secure personal records and legal documents needed. He will also produce audiovisual materials to help educate the public about the returning community and inform those in need about their rights and reintegration opportunities. “Thomas is interested in understanding how such persons reconstruct social networks in the face of discrimination and how they maintain connections with family and friends in the country where they grew up,” said Patricia Fernández-Kelly, professor of sociology and Coulouras’s senior thesis advisor. “His project is of interest to the sociology of immigration, cultural sociology and economic sociology.”

As an undergraduate, Coulouras served as co-chair of the Pace Center Activism and Advocacy Student Board and as a leader of rights education and community safety efforts for Resistencia en Acción, a community organization which advocates for the rights of migrants in central New Jersey. Coulouras has held internships at the Indian Chamber of Commerce in India, where his findings were used in a startup policy report of interest to low-income communities, and at Right to Democracy in Puerto Rico, where he contributed to the organization’s solidarity-building efforts and investigated the representation of U.S. territories in federal formula-based programs. Coulouras also earned minors in history and gender and sexuality studies, as well as certificates in African American studies and Latin American studies.

After his fellowship year, Coulouras hopes to attend graduate school so that he can further his studies of immigration law. “As international conflicts proliferate and people increasingly become displaced, we remain in the age of the refugee,” he said. “I believe that we can learn from refugees about what it means to form communities wherever we are and protect our found communities, regardless of the wavering backings of nation-states.” 

Alan Plotz

Plotz will partner with the Kino Border Initiative (KBI), a migrant shelter and advocacy organization based in Nogales, Mexico that serves people detained and deported from the U.S. or journeying north to the U.S., to document abuse of migrants at the hands of border control. “In doing this work during a period of new border policies with the voices of deported migrants at KBI, I can inform timely humanitarian work to improve the lives of border-crossers and those who travel north through Mexico,” he said. “My abuse documentation project will serve to fill in gaps in KBI's documentation and center the unique perspectives of deportees, in a changing political landscape.”

Plotz’s academic interests are closely tied to his campus and community engagement. He collaborated with projects and organizations such as Resistencia en Acción NJ, the Princeton Asylum Project, and Solidaridad, a volunteer group that supports undocumented migrants in New Jersey by assisting them in completing asylum and work applications. “He exhibited a profound commitment to understanding the struggles of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, as well as the ethical and political questions arising from their experiences,” said Mauro Lazarovich, postdoctoral research associate and lecturer in Latin American studies.

Plotz, who also earned minors in Latin American studies and American studies, intends to pursue a career in law in the future. “The [experiences] of migration are depressingly, heartbreakingly common and monotonously similar,” he said. “I hope my report can uncover — and my future career as an immigration lawyer can address — potential systemic solutions. Through centering the stories of those who did not make it to the U.S. and those most at risk for violence in transit, I hope to shed light on the impacts of new border policies and to inform humanitarian work for migrants across the region.”