2023

Viviana Prado-Núñez

Viviana Prado-Núñez, a graduate of Columbia University, won the 2023 Morocco Project Support Award for her audio series “How to Kill Tigers”, aiming to explore Latino-Moroccan cultural connections and musician migration to Morocco. The Project Support Award will enhance the podcast by funding Spanish translation, marketing, distribution, the creation and recording of Latino-Moroccan-fused theme music. […]

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Sassan Tabatabai

Sassan Tabatabai won the 2023 Persian Translation Prize for his translation of Sadeq Hedayat’s Blind Owl. Tabatabai holds a prominent position as the head of the Persian program at Boston University, where he regularly teaches all levels of Persian language and literature. His multifaceted expertise extends beyond academia, encompassing roles as a poet, translator, editor,

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Earl Lewis

Dr. Earl Lewis is the 2023 speaker for the Distinguished Fulbright Lecture. Noted social historian, award-winning author, and educational leader, he is the founding director of the University of Michigan Center for Social Solutions. Also the Thomas C. Holt Distinguished University Professor of History, Afroamerican and African Studies, and public policy, Lewis is president emeritus

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Carina Isbell

Carina is conducting research on the agroecology movement and its impact on policy in Uruguay. This award will support her transcription and translation needs as she travels to conduct interviews with community members. Having recently completed her Master’s degree in Community Development and Applied Economics from the University of Vermont, Carina intends to pursue a

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László Vizsy

László Vizsy is an Emerging Voices Specialist in the U.S. Embassy in Budapest, Hungary. During László’s thirty-plus years of service, his innovative leadership in outreach to tens of thousands of students, management of five American Corners, interpretation skills, and supervisory skills have been instrumental in furthering cultural understanding and educational opportunities for both countries. Although

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Sami Saaied

Sami Saaied is a Strategic Public Engagement Specialist in the U.S. Embassy in Tunis, Tunisia. Over more than twenty years managing PD outreach and speaker programs, Sami has used his expertise in grants management, his broad contact base and deep knowledge of the academic scene in Tunisia to bring U.S. perspectives to thought leaders and

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Josita Ekouevi

Josita Ekouevi is a Public Engagement Specialist for Established Opinion Leaders in the U.S. Embassy in Lomé, Togo. For twenty-five years, one thousand exchange alumni have considered “Auntie Josita” part of their family for her skill in guiding them to successful exchange experiences. Membership in the self-run Global Alumni Association of Togo is viewed as

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Irina Colin

Irina Colin is an Established Opinion Leaders Specialist in the U.S. Embassy in Chisinau, Moldova. Over twenty-six years, mentoring dozens of new staff, Irina has built a culture of high achievers by her example. A strategic thinker, skillful implementer and trusted colleague, Irina deciphers complexities from Moldova’s culture to the PDSI process to make her

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Sharon I-Hua Hsieh

Sharon I-Hua Hsieh is recognized for greatly expanding people-to-people ties by spearheading the efforts to launch a new U.S.-Taiwan Education Initiative. By nurturing partnerships with several Taiwan ministries, she increased both U.S. and host-country funding for exchanges, making Taiwan’s Fulbright/Foundation for Scholarly Exchange program one of the largest in the region and its English Teaching

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Maria Eugenia (‘Jenny’) Verdaguer

Since 2007, Jenny has led a team of international exchange professionals supporting 1,700 participants per year from thirty countries. Jenny pioneered multi-country Fulbright collaborative research initiatives, including the Fulbright Regional Network for Applied Research (NEXUS) Program, and the new Fulbright Amazonia Initiative reflecting current multi-disciplinary and team-based research approaches to academic cooperation on climate change

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Bernice Affotey

Berenice Affotey has motivated and prepared thousands of students to follow their dreams of studying in the United States. In addition, Ms. Affotey generously serves as a trainer and mentor to institutional contacts, her fellow Sub-Saharan African Advisers and at many international education conferences. Every school break brings former students returning from the United States,

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Christienne Carroll

Christienne has applied her vision of bringing disparate peoples together and improving their chances for success during a series of assignments in the toughest PD environments. In Iraq (twice), Tunis and her current post, Christienne uses her superior foreign language, programming and grants management skills to offer a broad swath of publics carefully-crafted civic and

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Laurence (Larry) Socha

Three years after the restoration of U.S. diplomatic presence in Mogadishu after a nearly 30 year absence, Larry Socha is updating the U.S.-Somalia narrative popularized by Hollywood scripts now decades old to an authentic account of partnership with Somali institutions.  Larry kickstarted programs for artists, exchange participants, English Teaching Fellows, a new American Corner and events

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Dr. Kayln McDonough

Dr. Kayln McDonough is a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Melbourne and an advocate for social justice through sport, particularly for youth and using sport to strengthen communities. Her home institution is University of Delaware’s College of Health Sciences’ Partnership for Healthy Communities. She is applying post doctoral research to sport programming she is

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Rebecca Hawkes

Rebecca, a published poet, is currently pursuing her Master’s of Fine Art in Poetry at the University of Michigan. She intends to turn her book-length creative thesis into her second full-length book of poetry to be published both in New Zealand and the US. Her first book, Meat Lovers, was a collection of poems on

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Kristina Nielsen

Kristina Nielsen was selected as a recipient for the 2023 Denmark Project Support Award. She will conduct postdoctoral research at Roskilde University on “Globalization without Multiculturalism?: Paradoxes of Danishness and Danish Children’s Music.” Utilizing ethnographic fieldwork, musical analysis, and archival research, Dr. Nielsen plans to examine how state-produced Danish children’s music responds to the paradoxes

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Emily Kuhn

Emily Kuhn will use this award to support her project, Understanding Kichwa Agroecology as an Intergenerational Pedagogy. She will work with linguists, Kichwa ethno-scientists, sound engineers and graphic designers to create audiovisual materials for students and educators to promote the transfer of ancestral ecological knowledge to support sustainable agricultural practices. She earned her BA in

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Irina Wang

Irina Wang was selected for her project on Visualizing Indigenous Perspectives on Arctic Climate Change. A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, she will use the award to develop gameplay materials to facilitate conversations with and among herders on the impact of climate change on reindeer husbandry in collaboration with colleagues from CHARTER

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Timothy Sowa

Timothy Sowa was selected for his project on Sustainable Digital Education. He will use the award to travel and expand his engagement with Finnish educators, researchers and students on how social sciences and technology can work together to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals. He is currently working on his Master’s degree in Social Science

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Max Frankel

Although his Fulbright research is focused on Capturing Neuroscience on the Nanoscale, Max will use the Sweden Project Support Award to support an exchange between artists at the Royal Institute of Art and scientists at SciLifeLab that will result in an exhibition “Scientific Research through an Artist’s Lens”. After completing his Fulbright research, he plans

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Michael Monzon

Michael Monzon is currently working on his PhD in Entomology at Rutgers. His Fulbright research is focused on the application of Insect Science to Archaeology. The Sweden Project Support Award will support expanding the scope of his original Fulbright project beyond archaeological entomology to incorporate lithic analysis of stone tools produced in northern Sweden, an

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Eric Benninghoff

Eric is working on his multicultural video project on the transition from school to employment for people with developmental disabilities such as autism. Eric graduated from Yale with a BA in Political Science in 2020. Upon return to the United States, he plans to continue in video journalism, with a focus on telling the stories

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