Seven University of Connecticut students and seven faculty members have been chosen to participate in the Fulbright Program this year.
The Fulbright Program is an international exchange program designed to create peace and understanding between participant nations. Since its inception in 1946, it has funded the exchange of more than 300,000 scholars to more than 150 nations.
The program grants a number of award types, depending on the interests of the host country and the applicant. This year’s participants from UConn have been placed across the Fulbright award spectrum.
Three students were awarded Fulbright English Teaching Assistantships, which fund the teaching of English in foreign nations: Adaliss Rodriguez, who will teach in Spain; Christine Lutian, who will be in Germany; and Carolyn Morway, who will be located in Azerbaijan.
Three students have received grants for dissertation research: Anthony Antonucci (history) for research in Italy on the social networks that Americans formed with Italians and others between 1790 and 1860; Ashley de Marchena (psychology) for research in Spain on implicit perspective-taking by children with autism spectrum disorder; and Daniela Melo (political science) for research in Portugal to study social movements in Revolutionary Portugal (1969-1978).
In addition, recent alumnus Joseph Pomianowski, CLAS ’09, now a graduate student at Harvard, has been awarded a fellowship allowing for a year of research in Poland, where he plans to study the life of the Polish mathematician Stefan Banach.
Faculty winners of the Fulbright Scholar grants include Michael Bradford, Stephanie Milan, Kathryn Myers, Mark Overmyer-Velazquez, and Eliana Rojas. Fulbright Scholars are chosen to lecture and conduct research in their given field while spending time in foreign nations.
Michael Bradford, associate professor of playwriting in the dramatic arts department, School of Fine Arts, will spend five months in Spain conducting research and completing the theatrical play that he is writing about Spanish writer Federico Garcia Lorca. The play is tentatively titled Olives and Blood.
Stephanie Milan, assistant professor of clinical psychology, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, will spend six months in Kenya, teaching and consulting on course development in the new Master’s Program in Clinical Psychology at the University of Nairobi. Milan will also conduct a collaborative research project with department faculty to develop locally validated measures of children’s mental health.
Kathryn Myers, professor of painting in the art and art history department, School of Fine Arts, will spend the 2011 spring semester in India, Sri Lanka, and Nepal, conducting research to broaden the scope of a course she teaches called “Contemporary Indian Art and Popular Culture.”
Mark Overmyer-Velazquez, associate professor of history in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, will spend the 2011 spring semester at the Pontificia Universidad Católica in Chile, where he will conduct research on how domestic and international flow and regulation of migrants unites the contemporary histories of both Chile and the United States.
Eliana Rojas, assistant professor-in-residence in the curriculum and instruction department, Neag School of Education, was awarded a Fulbright Specialist Grant to spend January 2011 working with faculty and graduate assistants in mathematics, engineering, statistics, and economics at the Universidad Austral de Chile. Her work will focus on “Pedagogical Competencies in Higher Education.”
Two UConn faculty members have also received Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad grants for 2010-11. These grants support research and training efforts overseas that focus on non-western foreign languages and area studies.
Manisha Desai, associate professor of sociology, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and director of the Women’s Studies Program, will conduct research on the manifestations and impact of contradictory commitments to gender and environmental market-based development on the policies and practices of the state, the activism of social movements, and the lives of ordinary men and women in Gujarat, India.
Angel Oquendo, George J. and Helen M. England Professor of Law, School of Law, will investigate the emerging field of trans-individual rights in Brazil, Panama, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic.
