Four University of Connecticut faculty members have been named Fulbright Scholars for the 2025-26 academic year by the U.S. State Department and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.
Fulbright Scholars are faculty, researchers, administrators, and established professionals teaching or conducting research in affiliation with institutes abroad. Fulbright Scholars engage in cutting-edge research and expand their professional networks, often continuing research collaborations started abroad and laying the groundwork for forging future partnerships between institutions.
Upon returning to their home countries, institutions, labs, and classrooms, they share their stories and often become active supporters of international exchange, inviting foreign scholars to campus and encouraging colleagues and students to go abroad.
The following are the UConn faculty members who earned a Fulbright for 2025-26:




Robert Bird, a professor of law in the School of Business, who will be spending three months in the fall 2025 semester studying human-centered legal strategy and design at the University of Vaasa in Finland.
Inge-Marie Eigsti, a professor of psychological sciences in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, will spend part of the 2025-26 academic year at the Université libre de Bruxelles in Belgium. She will study the cognitive mechanisms behind “unexpected bilingualism” in autistic children who fluently speak a language not used at home.
Julie Granger, a professor of marine sciences in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, will travel to the University of Cape Town in South Africa. She will assess the biological factors contributing to severe dissolved oxygen depletion in an economically important embayment in the Southern Benguela Upwelling System.
Elizabeth Hintz, an assistant professor of communication in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, will spend three months during the spring 2026 semester at Tampere University in Finland, studying communication and resilience in health care settings.