Fulbright & Academic Collaborations
Roth Foundation Fulbright & Academic Collaborations include exchange-based project support scholarships and co-sponsorship of events and fellowships.
The first program the Roth Foundation established in the late-1980s consisted in small supplementary grants for projects being conducted in countries of special significance to Lois Roth. Organized in collaboration with the American Scandinavian Foundation (Denmark) and five Fulbright Commissions (in Australia, Finland, New Zealand, Norway and Sweden), these long formed the backbone of our exchange-based programming. In most cases, grantees are invited to submit a proposal for supplemental funding once they are settled, enabling them to take advantage of unexpected opportunities and collaborations that arise. In celebration of our 35th anniversary in 2022, the Foundation extended this exchange-based program to three new partners: Fulbright Uruguay, Fulbright Ecuador and the Moroccan-American Commission for Education and Cultural Exchange (MACECE). With the help of these three partners, the Roth Foundation is also launching a pilot project to support US-bound Fulbrighters.
Non-exchange programs include the annual Fulbright Distinguished Lecture, in collaboration with the US-UK Fulbright Commission, Oxford University, Kings College London and the University of Edinburgh. Established in 2011, these lectures focus on international affairs and relations and have featured luminaries in different fields, including John Kerry, Devi Sridhar, David Miliband, Janet Napolitano, Lord Nicholas Stern, Anne-Marie Slaughter and Joseph Stiglitz, among others. A second non-exchange program, currently on hiatus, is the CASVA-Henry & Judith Millon Award, which helps support a research fellow at the National Gallery’s Center for Advanced Research in the Visual Arts (CASVA).
Our Awards
Now in its 14th year, the Fulbright Distinguished Lecture features an annual lecture by prominent figures in international relations. It is co‐sponsored by the US‐UK Fulbright Commission, Pembroke College and the Department of Politics and International Relations at Oxford, Kings College London and the University of Edinburgh. The lecture honors the life and work of Senator J. William Fulbright, who spent four years at Pembroke College in Oxford, from 1924 to 1928. The 2024 Distinguished Lecture took place on June in a hybrid format – before an in-person audience at University of Oxford Pembroke College and simultaneously livestreamed.
On June 14, 2024, CNN host and best-selling author Dr. Fareed Zakaria spoke on “Towards a Post-American International Order.” A video of the lecture is available on the US-UK Fulbright Commission’s website.
Dr. Zakaria’s lecture delves into the dramatic shifts in the geopolitics we are currently witnessing. Almost 80 years on from the end of World War II, the international liberal order is under acute stress around the world while its main supporter, the United States, turns increasingly inward. He proposes the question to the audience: What is going to come next?
Dr. Fareed Zakaria is the host of Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN, a columnist for The Washington Post, and a bestselling author. He has been nominated for several Emmys for his television work and has won one, along with the prestigious Peabody Award for his weekly CNN show. Since the debut of his show in 2008, it has featured interviews with several prominent figures including Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Emmanuel Macron. Zakaria has authored five highly-regarded New York Times bestselling books: Age of Revolutions (2024), The Post-American World (2008), The Future of Freedom (2003), Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World (2020), and In Defense of a Liberal Education (2015). Before his tenure at CNN, Zakaria served as an editor of Newsweek International, a managing editor of Foreign Affairs, a columnist for Time, an analyst for ABC News, and the host of Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria on PBS. Zakaria holds a bachelor’s degree from Yale University, a doctorate in political science from Harvard University, and many numerous honorary degrees.
Project Grants
Programs that enable scholars and artists to live and work in other countries for a time are at the heart of international exchange and what we can understand as cultural diplomacy in a broader sense. Lois Roth worked with such programs throughout her career, both at the American Scandinavian Foundation and with the U.S. State Department. The Roth Foundation seeks to reinforce the service rendered by Fulbright and other such programs by offering supplementary support for projects in the social sciences and humanities, including the visual and performing arts. Project Support is awarded only in tandem with primary funding agencies and assists students, scholars and artists in taking advantage of opportunities that deepen their international experiences.
Inbound Support Grant
In response to the high cost of living in the U.S., which exacerbates challenges faced by all researchers, in 2025 we launched a pilot to explore providing more grants for U.S.-bound Fulbrighters. For the time being, this pilot grant will rotate each year among our three newest Project Support partners: the Fulbright Commissions in Ecuador, Morocco and Uruguay. However, we realize that there is a widespread need for this kind of support and hope ultimately to be able to offer grants for all of these countries. Ecuadorian Master’s student doctoral student Gabriela Pinasco Nájera was awarded the second Inbound Support Grant.
Gabriela Pinasco Nájera is a journalist, documentarian and human rights activist pursuing a Master in Journalism at NYU. Her work has focused on first-hand accounts of human rights issues in South America.
In 2025 she received the Gallatin Global Fellowship in Human Rights, a year-long program that prepares students to work throughout the summer with international human rights organizations. She collaborated with members of the Kichwa community in Ecuador in the filming of a short documentary now serving as her master’s thesis project, recently screened at the 2026 NYU Documentary Film Festival.
The piece highlights the conservation work carried out by Kichwa communities,who resist through activism as well as their culture and ancestral language. Simultaneously, the film reveals the real scale of environmental damage caused by mining, which is polluting rivers that serve as the only source of water for many Indigenous communities. Now, more than ever, it is crucial to document and share these contrasts and realities before it is too late.
Gabriela is now in the post-production phase of this documentary, using LRF’s support to cover film color grading processes and to support the film’s distribution, including for international festival entries to reach audiences across different countries and platforms.
New Zealand/Aotearoa
In addition to the Inbound Support pilot project, the New Zealand/Aotearoa grant goes to a Fulbright scholar from New Zealand/Aotearoa who is coming to the U.S. to pursue graduate study. Project Support New Zealand Award honors the memory of Robin Winks, a founding board member of the Roth Foundation and Yale University history professor, and his New Zealander wife, Avril. Amy Weng won the Project Support Award for 2026.
As a second generation Chinese-New Zealander, Amy Weng is committed to supporting emerging Asian Aotearoa artists through research on Asian diaspora identities within broader post-colonial and indigenous frameworks. Her Fulbright project at New York University is a comparative study of Asian American and Asian New Zealand art practices, with the goal of expanding curatorial methodologies and contemporary art narratives in Aotearoa.
The Lois Roth Foundation’s support will assist in research materials as well as building partnerships with NYC galleries and museums to present curated exhibitions of Asian diasporic experiences. After her research she hopes to continue to become a leader in the field, supporting artists and contributing to better public awareness through the arts.
Australia
The Roth Foundation provides supplementary support to one American Fulbrighter working in Australia each year, in collaboration with the Australian-American Fulbright Commission. The 2025 award went to Malvika Narayan.
Malvika’s research is rooted in dialogue—between clinicians and researchers, between institutions and public health systems, and between nations. A PhD candidate at Texas Tech University, she is undertaking a Fulbright in collaboration with the University of the Sunshine Coast to evaluate the Be Well Plan, an anti-burnout intervention for mental health clinicians. Through running synchronized control trials in the US and Australia, Malvika is able to investigate how the same intervention can be useful in starkly different healthcare systems. Funds from the Roth foundation will allow her to host a virtual symposium convening Australian and American stakeholders to share findings from parallel studies, reflect on cross-cultural insights, and strengthen binational strategies for improving mental health clinician wellbeing.
Upon returning to the US, Malvika intends to pilot the Be Well Plan at Texas Tech University and advocate to local governmental representatives for policies mitigating burnout.
Denmark
The Roth Foundation offers supplementary funds to a grantee of the American Scandinavian Foundation traveling to Denmark. This prize was instituted in honor of Lois Roth’s friend, Sonja Bungard-Nielsen, long-time director of the Danish American Foundation. In 2025, Dr. Bart Pushaw was selected as a recipient for the Award.
Most of the Inuit artworks that are the subject of Dr. Pushaw’s study are not in Greenland, taken and residing in collections in places as diverse as Oslo and Kansas. Dr. Bart Pushaw, of the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga researches, collates, historicizes, and analyzes these artworks in order to advocate for their return home.
Indulgent Images: Colonial Inuit Art and the Atlantic World is the first attempt in forty years to establish a critical corpus of Inuit art produced in Greenland between 1680 and 1900. As Dr. Pushaw’s first academic monograph, the project foregrounds close reading of historical art and expressive culture by Inuit makers to understand how Kalaallit Inuit envisioned futures for themselves and navigated colonialism in their own terms.
Funds from the Lois Roth Foundation will support Dr. Pushaw to collaborate with the Nuuk Art Museum, Inuit scholars, and community stakeholders to co-create knowledge on historical art and material culture, as well as study, consult, and photograph otherwise inaccessible artworks that are critical to his academic monograph.
Ecuador
The Roth Foundation provides supplementary support for projects in the social sciences and humanities, including the visual and performing arts to one American Fulbrighter working in Ecuador each year, in partnership with Comisión Fulbright del Ecuador. This year, we are pleased to announce two recipients, Derek Russell and Marielle Buxbaum.
Derek’s project, Cañ & Ara: Mending Climates with Vernacular Cosmovisions, aims to convene a 2-day Plurinational Craft Council that would include artisans and craftspeople from various indigenous nations to share architectural knowledge of indigenous construction.
Funding for this project will go towards covering the costs of artisan attendance and presentation of their work, event materials, as well as a donation of gratitude to the Seikoya community hosting the event.
Marielle Buxbaum’s Theatre for Youth Futures: Engaging Ecuadorian Urban Teens explores the social concerns of Ecuadorian youth. Marielle’s playwriting and theatre program engages with the therapeutic value of working with teens’ creative imaginations to process their own stories and work towards community change.
Support from the Lois Roth Foundation will fund the purchase of costumes and props for the theatre project, which can be used for future groups and productions.
Finland
A generous gift from Ann O. Thomson provides supplementary project support for up to two American Fulbrighters in Finland every year, in cooperation with the Fulbright Finland Foundation. The 2026 award went to Emily Boyett.
Growing up in a newspaper family in rural Illinois, Emily’s dedication to seek the truth encouraged her to the world’s leading journalism school and learn how to engage with people from diverse background and perspectives. Her continued commitment has motivated her research project to compare media literacy and trust in Finland and the United States.
This Project Support Award will support Emily pursuing a Master of Global Politics and Communication at the University of Helsinki. After learning about other countries’ digital policy and how to communicate political differences with her Fulbright Program, she plans to pursue a JD/ Master of Public Policy dual degree to prepare herself for public service. She hopes to use her expertise in research or advocacy roles to combat digital extremism.
Morocco
The Roth Foundation provides supplementary support for projects in the social sciences and humanities, including the visual and performing arts to one American Fulbrighter working in Morocco each year, in collaboration with Moroccan-American Commission for Education and Cultural Exchange (MACECE Fulbright Morocco).
Anouk Guilhaume-Levy, architecture student from the University of California– Berkeley, is the recipient of the 2026 Project Support Morocco award for her project on adapting traditional building techniques for modern architectural technology in post-disaster reconstruction. With the support of the LRF award, Anouk will photograph heritage sites where reconstruction is underway, and conduct interviews with earthquake-affected communities and those involved in restoration. She hopes to make this research available to local communities and architects who combine traditional and modern techniques.
Upon her return to the US, Anouk plans to pursue a graduate degree in material research and building sciences, using her research on rammed-earth architecture techniques to apply to modern built environments.
Norway
In collaboration with Fulbright Norway, the Roth Foundation grants an award to an American Fulbrighter in Norway every year. The 2026 award went to Ben Gusdal.
Ben Gusdal’s research examines how Norway navigates the tension between being both a major petroleum producer and a global climate leader, using methods such as interviews, public conversations, scholarly analysis, and empirical data to investigate whether oil wealth obstructs or enables Norway’s climate ambitions. The project explores how policymakers and citizens view the relationship between the oil sector, welfare-state stability, and environmental goals, and what lessons other nations might draw from Norway’s unique position.
Ben will use the support from the Lois Roth Foundation to increase his regional fieldwork outside of Oslo, specifically across western and northern Norway, to capture geographic variation in petroleum governance, Indigenous perspectives, and community-level environmental and economic impacts.
Following his Fulbright grant and research project, Ben plans to enroll in law school with a focus on energy law. He will use his research in Norway as a foundation to contribute to renewable energy law and policy.
Sweden
A generous gift from Ann O. Thomson, whom Lois referred to as her Swedish adoptive mother, provides supplementary project support for American Fulbrighters in Sweden every year. The 2026 award was presented to Alison Chan.
Alison Chan’s research at the Karolinska Institutet works to answer the question: “How does culture influence the way we interpret biological data, define progress, and assign meaning to illness?” Throughout the research process, she has come to appreciate that understanding disease often requires more than biochemistry alone. Using Lois Roth support to combine patient-centered interviews, narrative documentation, and visual storytelling, Alison extends her Fulbright research to examine how individuals living with Parkinson’s in Sweden experience diagnosis, treatment, and identity.
This project extends beyond the laboratory, examining how science and society jointly shape the meaning of disease. By situating biomarker research within its broader social context, the project highlights that data are not culturally neutral: they gain meaning through language, ethics, and shared understanding.
Uruguay
The Roth Foundation seeks to reinforce the service rendered by Comisión Fulbright Uruguay by offering supplementary support for projects in the social sciences and humanities, including the visual and performing arts. The 2025 award went to Juliana Merullo.
Juliana Merullo, a recent Brown University graduate, is collaborating with Universidad de la República to document voices and perspectives of Uruguayan cattle farmers in an oral history archive. She hopes to capture their experiences of the current transition and change to the tradition of cattle grazing as a result of the recent governments’ efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
With the help of the 2025 Project Support Award Uruguay, she will be able to expand on her online archive to publish interviews on Uruguayan radio stations and American podcasts. As Juliana notes, “I am excited about the prospect of bringing more attention – within Uruguay and beyond – to the stories of these rural cattle farmers and their families, overcoming language barriers and cultural divides in the process.”
The Henry And Judith Millon Award
The Henry and Judith Millon Award helps support the residency of a foreign architectural historian at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA), part of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. The award is named after Henry Millon—Roth Foundation founding Roth Foundation Board member and CASVA founder‐director—and his wife, Judy.
We are grieved at the passing of Henry A. Millon in 2018. The program was on hiatus last year, but we look forward to starting up again, with renewed purpose, in 2019.