Three seniors awarded Labouisse Prize for international civic engagement projects

Fox, a history major from Silver Spring, Maryland, will collaborate on strategic litigation, legal interventions and legal research that counters international human rights abuses in Berlin, Germany. Gold, an English major from New York City, will document how farmers are experiencing the region's water crisis amid climate change in Pedasí, Panama. Travis, a psychology major from Evanston, Illinois, will undertake a qualitative study in the Kanungu District of southwest Uganda, to examine how private investment can function as a sustainable public health intervention. 

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).

“In times like these, with a return to late-nineteenth century raw power politics internationally, turning societies and cultures into adversaries, the projects of Fox, Gold and Travis keep alive ideas and practices that celebrate humanity’s connectedness and cooperation,” said Emmanuel Kreike, professor of history and chair of the Labouisse selection committee.

Uma Fox 

Fox will spend her fellowship at the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), a Berlin-based NGO that that develops and uses innovative strategic legal interventions to challenge impunity and structural injustice worldwide. She will work on ECCHR’s Central Mediterranean project, which focuses on accountability for international crimes committed against migrants and refugees in Libya and across the broader Mediterranean region, with particular attention to the responsibility of the EU and its Member States. Her role will involve legal research, survivor-centered advocacy, and engagement with international and domestic accountability mechanisms, including proceedings before the International Criminal Court, as well as universal jurisdiction and other domestic cases within European states. 

Fox received the Class of 1939 Princeton Scholar Award, which is awarded each year to the undergraduate who, at the end of junior year, has achieved the highest academic standing for all preceding college work at the University. She is also a two-time recipient of the Shapiro Prize for Academic Excellence and the Department of History’s Lawrence Stone and Shelby Cullom Davis Prize. Her senior thesis focused on the transnational implications of Indian counterterrorism prosecutions and national security policy in the 1980s and 1990s. Fox has interned at the U.S. Department of Justice’s Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section as part of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA)’s 2024 cohort of the Scholars in the Nation’s Service Initiative. She also conducted research on post-war accountability and human rights issues in Colombo, Sri Lanka, as a Streicker International Fellow, and on constitutional rights litigation in New Delhi, India, heard in front of the Supreme Court of India.

On campus, Fox is co-editor-in-chief of the Princeton Historical Review, a research assistant and senior international policy associate with the Liechtenstein Institute on Self Determination, and a U-Councilor of the Undergraduate Student Government. Fox, who is also earning certificates in journalism and South Asian studies, will matriculate at Harvard Law School in fall 2028. 

Raphaela Gold 

Gold previously worked with Fundación Pro Eco Azuero (FPEA) in Pedasí, Panama as a reforestation intern through Princeton’s International Internship Program (IIP); she will return to the grassroots environmental nonprofit during her fellowship year to support reforestation and education programs and contribute to much-needed documentation and communications efforts from the rural Azuero Peninsula. She plans to highlight the connection between ecological harm and rural workers through a biweekly newsletter through a series of profiles spotlighting the those who have been affected by water contamination and create community resources and toolkits to help advance FPEA’s goal of spreading their replicable strategies across the country.

Gold is earning minors in environmental studies and journalism; her experiences in agriculture and climate action also inform her work. During her post-high school gap year, she travelled to Wisconsin, Vermont, North Carolina and Illinois to learn about the U.S. agricultural system. She has worked as a research assistant for Heatmap News, researching state-level opposition to renewable energy, and as a writer for GlacierHub, a publication of the Columbia Climate School.

Gold was named the recipient of the 2025 Gregory T. Pope Prize for Science Writing, which is granted to an undergraduate student who has shown a keen interest in science and demonstrated an outstanding ability to communicate that enthusiasm to a wide audience through journalism. She is also the recipient of the Class of 1870 Junior Prize, which is awarded to a junior student for being the best scholar in English literature.  

At Princeton, she served as Features editor and Archives editor at The Daily Princetonian. She co-founded and led Sunrise Princeton, which advocates for greening the university’s endowment and advocating for research funding that is not beholden to fossil fuel companies, and is a manager of the Princeton Garden Project. She intends to attend law school after her fellowship year.

William Travis 

During his fellowship year, Travis will partner with Bwindi Community Hospital (BCH) and the African University of Science and Management (AUSM) to evaluate a school lunch program across 16 community schools. His research will examine how the program has successfully translated private financial support into a sustainable public health intervention. While previous assessments conducted by BCH and the AUSM have collected metrics on attendance, enrollment and academic performance, Travis seeks to understand the effects on overall nutrition, community engagement and public health trust. The work will focus on the community-based, nuanced aspects of international aid programs, creating a framework for how future initiatives should be organized in respectful and effective ways.

Travis, an aspiring doctor who is earning minors in global health policy and neuroscience, interned in Iquitos, Peru as a field researcher for High Meadows Environmental Institute conducting research on the intersection between human activity and environmental conservation in the Amazon region. There, he also pursued an additional independent project on community medicine in the Loreto region of Peru. These experiences sparked his interest in global health, and informed his senior thesis, which seeks develop a qualitative conceptual model to effectively assess the psychological experiences of clinicians caring for patients with brain cancer across several health systems. 

On campus, Travis plays on the varsity Princeton men’s soccer team. He serves as co-chair of external relations with the Princeton Peer Health Advisor Program, a fellow in the 2025-26 National Engaged Athlete Fellowship, an athlete mentor with Princeton Health Professions Advising, and a volunteer with Princeton Science Outreach Fellows. Previously, he worked as a research assistant in the Princeton Intelligent Performance and Adaptation Lab, as public health researcher in partnership with Princeton and the New Jersey Harm Reduction Coalition, as a nutritional delivery volunteer at Penn Medicine Princeton Health, and as a volunteer Spanish medical interpreter at Community Health Chicago.