Selected Grantees
Grants to EU Nationals | Grants to U.S. Nationals
Dr. Gerrit Dielissen, a Dutch national and lecturer in sociology at the University of Tilburg, spent three months at Vanderbilt as an EU Scholar-in-Residence. He was affiliated with the Max Kade Center for European and German Studies where he focused on consulting with faculty and students and giving an occasional lecture on the EU, its organization, mission, and initiatives. He worked with 17 seniors on their senior thesis projects, and even served as the main advisor for one of them. At Vanderbilt, he gave over a dozen guest lectures on the EU and European immigration/integration, as well as other lectures at Belmont University, Brown University, the University of Mississippi, the University of Alabama, the University of Kentucky, the University of Texas at El Paso and several local high schools. He was also very helpful in improving the European Studies Program at Vanderbilt and worked closely with the College of Arts & Sciences as well as with colleagues in education, sociology, political science and history. His faculty sponsor at Vanderbilt, Professor John McCarthy, says simply: “In short, thank you for sending us Professor Dielissen! He was a wonderful addition to our program, and we are very pleased at the prospect for future collaboration with him.”
Dr. Daniel Faas, a German national serving as a lecturer in sociology at Trinity College at the University of Dublin, spent four months at the University of California at Berkeley where he conducted research on migration. His project focused on understanding integration and identity as well as institutional approaches in schools. His plan was to study the transatlantic challenges arising from migration-related diversity in education, and in society at large, and to inform policy developments at the U.S. and EU levels. His research progressed extremely well and he returned to Europe with a completed book manuscript and a journal article. He says of his experience:
This is undoubtedly one of the best academic programs in the world. Over the years, I have been blessed with a number of excellent academic opportunities including my two degrees at Cambridge and a Marie-Curie Intra-European Fellowship in Greece. The Fulbright program provides a unique opportunity for EU scholars to spend a concentrated period of up to one academic year at a US campus. This is otherwise not easily possible and, unless EU scholars are very well-known internationally in their field, the US market would not easily be accessible for us. The Fulbright program therefore builds invaluable and also generously-funded transatlantic bridges.
Dr. Joaquin Gonzalez-Ibanez, a Spanish national and dean of the Social & Applied Languages Faculty at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, spent nine months in the U.S. conducting research and lecturing at American University and Fordham University. During the fall semester at Fordham, he conducted research on human rights, finished editing the 2nd edition of his book on human rights, international relations, and globalization. He also produced two articles, one on human rights (in Spanish) and the second one, in English, entitled” Human Rights and the Rule of Law after Abu Ghraib and the Election of Barack Obama: A European Vision of the Past and Future of the U.S. War on Terror.” During the second semester, he taught a course, “An Introduction to European Union Law”, for J.D. and LL.M. students at American University. In addition to all of the above activities, he also found time to give lectures at the University of Florida, the University of North Florida, the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Golden Gate University, and Fairleigh Dickinson University. He says of his experience:
I take this opportunity to express again my gratitude for being part of this intellectual, human, and academic experience. Being a Fulbright-Schuman visiting scholar, undoubtedly, has enriched and reshaped, once again, my vision and approach to the US and the European and US international law approaches. My wife Iris, and my sons Gabriel, Daniela and myself have been really fortunate and happy during the academic year. Thank you for your work and support at Fulbright!
Ms. Susan Leerink, a Dutch citizen and advanced doctoral student in physics at the Helsinki University of Technology, was at New York University and M.I.T. for seven months during the academic year. At M.I.T., she worked at the plasma science and fusion center testing and further developing the gyrokinetic full f-code Elmfire. This project is directly related to the EU’s ITER Project, which involves building the largest fusion experiment in Cadarache, France, over the coming ten years. The ITER project is an international collaboration involving many countries including the U.S. and should prove the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion power. She made amazing progress over the seven-month period and returned to Finland in July to complete her doctoral dissertation.
Dr. Thierry Leterre, a French national and professor of political science at the University of Versailles-St-Quentin-en Yvelines in Versailles, was at Georgetown University for four months during the second semester of the academic year. His research involved a re-thinking/re-organizing of borders: Post 9/11 visa policies in the U.S. Through his contacts at the BMW Center for German and European Studies, he was able to contact different interviewees for his research on border security, including individuals at different levels within the Department of Homeland Security and a high level political appointee of the new administration. He completed two full articles while at Georgetown, one about the concept of natural law and the other one on social contract. Through the Occasional Lecture program, he was able to give lectures at Williams College and at Ball State University. In the fall, he took up the position of the Dean of Miami University’s John E. Dolibois Campus in Luxembourg. He says of his new position,
Though it is not directly related to my stay as a Fulbright fellow, except for the good Karma it beyond any doubt provided me with, I think it is a faithful prolongation of my being a Fulbright-Schuman Fellow to work at the heart of Europe as an American professor. I hope I will give my American students the taste for Europe, just as my Fulbright experience deepened my taste for the United States.
Ms. Teresa Pullano, an Italian citizen who received her doctoral degree in political science from Science-Po in Paris, spent the calendar year 2009 at Columbia University conducting research on a comparative study of US and EU citizenship and the right to free movement of people. Her research is progressing very well and she is in the process of completing three articles: the notions of territory and federation, a comparative approach: the EU and the USA; free movement of people within the EU and the evolving category of citizenship; and the restructuring of statehood in the European Union within the framework of globalization. She is also preparing a book proposal on the redefinition of the spatio-temporal matrix in the European Union: politics, statehood and citizenship. She will finish her grant in January 2010 and then return to Europe.
Ms. Vanessa Ricci, an Italian national and advanced doctoral student at the Institute for European Studies at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, spent nine months from January to September 2009 at Columbia University and the University of California at Berkeley. Her project involved an examination of the new role of the European Court of Justice in the establishment of an effective penal area on one side and EC law forseeing criminal penalties on the other. At Columbia, she collected a great deal of material helpful for her project and attended two courses, one on governance in the EU and the other on civil liberties and the war on terror. She found time to co-author two articles with Prof. Anne Weyembergh, both of which were published in the spring. In April, she was invited as a guest speaker at the conference, held in Canberra, on “Crossing Borders: Promoting Regional Law Enforcement Cooperation: European, Australian, and Asia-Pacific Perspectives.”She returned to Brussels in October.
Mr. Angelantonio Rosato, an Italian journalist for Limes – Rivista Italiana di Geopolitica, was at the University of Pittsburgh for nine months, starting in January 2009. His project entailed an accurate and detailed analysis of energy security in relations between the United States, the Russian Federation, and the European Union. His research has progressed extremely well and he has been very happy with the support he has received from the EU Center of Excellence and the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. In addition to his research, he gave four lecturers at Pittsburgh, finalized one article for publication entitled “Waiting for the Next Gas Crisis between Kiev and Moscow,” published in AGI Energia, Jan. – Feb. 2009. He also completed two other articles that will be published in Italian journals. He plans to return to Italy in November 2009.
Dr. Stefano Tomassini, an Italian citizen and professor of dance history at the Università Ca’Foscani di Venezia, spent 6 months at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts conducting research on cultural relationships between the U.S. and the EU in terms of dance history in the 20th century. His grant, originally planned for three months, was extended for an additional three months in order to allow him to complete his research. He returned to Italy in March.
Dr. Julie Wilson, a U.K. national and postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Geography of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, was at Columbia University and Brooklyn College for three months conducting research on urban space, tourism, and the creative class debate, a comparative analysis of US and EU cities. She feels privileged to have had the opportunity to work with two of the most acclaimed academics in the fields of urban planning and urban sociology: Professors Robert Beauregard and Sharon Zukin. In addition to these contacts, she also established working relationships with professors at Hunter College, City University of New York, Rutgers, Harvard and the Pratt Institute. She did extensive fieldwork in the DUMBO neighborhood of Brooklyn, which involved maintaining field notebooks and documenting changes via photographic records and annotated mapping documents. She hopes to be able to re-visit the DUMBO case study to be able to document changes over a number of years in a given neighborhood. She had an excellent stay and has nothing but praise for all aspects of her experience.
Ms. Monica Barrett, a graduating senior from the University of Washington, was at the University of Bath and ESC Toulouse conducting research on aerospace clusters in those two regions. She interviewed aerospace companies in both areas to understand their competitive strategies and their awareness and impact of government policies in both countries. She was a bit frustrated and disappointed by the slow nature of her research since most of her contacts in both countries were extremely busy business people. However, by the end of the academic year, she had made great progress in her research and was delighted with her stays in both countries.
Ms. Claudia Chlebek, another graduating senior from North Central College was in the U.K. and Poland studying the effects of Poland’s exclusion from the Visa Waiver Program. In Poland, she interviewed 52 individuals aged 18-35 in six different locations. She found that most Poles view the visa interview process as degrading and humiliating. Most people felt that U.S. Embassy staff believed that Poles only want to go to the U.S. to work illegally as domestic and/or factory workers. Others found that the visa application process was an obstacle to visiting family and friends in the U.S. All respondents said that the fact that Poland is not in the Visa Waiver Program has negatively affected their view of the U.S. She returned to the U.S. in June to start her Master’s program in political science.
Ms. Alison Cohen, a graduate of Brown University, was in Brussels conducting research on the implementation of the EU chemical policy REACH. She conducted 65 interviews with key informants from diverse sectors encompassing government, civil society, and industry, with substantial variation of role and type of actor within these three sectors. Data collected from these interviews were supplemented with content analysis of public documents and speeches providing stakeholder perspectives for whom interviews were not possible. She prepared three papers for publication and gave presentations at six conferences. Since her project centered on EU policy, she also traveled to Sweden, Finland, the UK and Spain to determine reactions in those countries to the implementation of REACH. She says of her year:
The Fulbright program definitely improves the way in which American people and society are perceived abroad – it allows for personal interaction and sharing individual, honest perspectives on how things work. For example, as I met with people working on the EU’s chemical policy REACH, they asked me about what was going on with chemicals regulation in the US, and I ended up compiling and sharing materials to more thoroughly explain policies and ongoing efforts to implement them.
Ms. Erica Dobbs, an advanced doctoral student from M.I.T., spent her year conducting research on citizenship and labor in Spain and Ireland. Her original project sought to understand the role of intervening institutions, specifically trade unions, in the integration of new immigrant communities in Spain and Ireland. However, she shifted her focus to reflect that many of these groups receive significant financial support from national governments, and that in turn may affect their behavior and the integration process. She collected a number of government documents and independent reports related to immigration and public funding of integrating organizations, and NGOs. She also interviewed immigration experts, and attended several immigration-related conferences held in and around Madrid. Her affiliation with the Juan March Institute gave her access to academic literature and Spanish databases that she did not have access to in the US. She then focused on interviews in Spain and Ireland with party officials, program officers, and immigration bureaucrats. After a six-month extension spent in Northern Ireland, she returned to the US knowing that she had made great progress, albeit slow, in gathering data for her dissertation.
Mr. Thomas Hylands, a Master’s degree candidate in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam conducting research on the impact of social policy on obesity rates in the European Union and North America. Using a pooled time-series approach, he measured the different impacts of government generosity in education, health, and income support policies since the start of the obesity epidemic in 1980. He completed his research in June and presented his Master’s thesis. As a result of his year in the Netherlands, he is now considering entering the field of public health or policy-making, which would give him an active role in addressing the obesity issue. However, he is still interested in an academic career and imagines that at one point in time, he will shift back from practitioner to academic.
Ms. Jill Jakimetz, who received her Master’s degree from the University of Oregon, was in Ireland and the Netherlands conducting research on agri-environment policies in these two countries. She gained insight into sustainable agriculture governance and its relationship with changes in landscape and livelihoods through literature review, interviews with administrators, farmers, and other land-users, and through the collection of visual and audio documentation. She returned to the US in September with a great deal of material for her planned Ph.D. She says of her year:
Through my travels, through my university sponsors, Fulbright seminar trips, cooking courses, and everyday life abroad, I have met amazing people and forged connections that have already led to a music/video collaborative project, a network of mentors in agricultural, environmental, and geography teaching and studies, brainstorming sessions with other young people entering into food/agriculture businesses. Just connections with thoughtful, brilliant, caring Fulbrighters has been a rewarding experience to take home.
Mr. Nikolaos Milonopoulos, a graduating senior from Stanford University, was at King’s College in London pursuing a Master’s degree in non-proliferation policy. The program gave him great background and depth to his studies of US national security policy. The experience in London enabled him to obtain the job of his dreams: a position in the U.S. Department of Defense, where he will work with the European Union to coordinate US and EU nonproliferation policies. In a world where threats to international security are increasingly global, he hopes to lead the Department in expanding its role in crafting arms control agreements to combat the proliferation of nuclear weapons. He says of his experience:
The Fulbright programme gave me an opportunity to engage with people from all over the world. The presence of Americans in a number of countries allows the US to export its ideals, culture and freedom. ..The programme allowed me to see many issues the United States faces in foreign policy from a different perspective. I was also able to explain to my classmates from the perspective of an American some different foreign policy decisions the United States made, like the invasion of Iraq or the war in Afghanistan. I was able to have my ideas challenged as well. Being in a classroom with students from very different backgrounds than mine exposed me to different perspectives on foreign policy issues. ..While I thought I knew the US before leaving last September, I was able to see it first hand through my Fulbright experience.
Dr. Mark Smith, a professor of economics at Colorado College, spent five months in Brussels at the European Commission conducting research on the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) for greenhouse gas emissions reduction. By the fall of 2009, the European Union had accumulated over four years of experience with the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. The purpose of his research was to determine whether or not such a program could be designed for the US as well. Being an economist, his aim was to understand how economic interests shape climate policy. In addition to his contacts in the European Commission, he also visited the ETS bureau in the Environmental Ministries in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Britain and Austria. His stay also included attendance at the Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen in December. His research proved to him that “we have something to learn from the European Union’s experience with the ETS and I would like to help get these lessons out in front of Americans.”
Dr. Carolyn Ban, a professor of public and urban affairs at the University of Pittsburgh, spent the spring semester at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven conducting research on the management of the European Commission. Her project entailed applying models developed in national governments to explore the impact of continued administrative reforms within the Commission on motivation, morale, and management. Her initial plan was to prepare a questionnaire to be distributed within the Commission. Upon arrival, however, she discovered that a similar questionnaire had already been distributed and she was granted access to the results. This significantly increased her productivity, since she was able to start the interview process almost immediately. She made incredible progress and plans to publish the results later this year.
Mr. Jason Colburn, a graduate of the law school at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, had a multi-country project on transferable models for sustainable transport development. He met with politicians, engineers, urban planners and academics to identify governance models for the development of smart growth-oriented, sustainable transport systems. He traveled to Berlin, Dublin, Strasbourg, Brussels, Madrid, Barcelona, Copenhagen and London to meet with individuals involved in the operation, design and implementation of the system. He is in the process of combining all of the information received into a final report that will systematically analyze each country’s ability to create sustainable transport governance models. He says of his experience:
The Fulbright can demonstrate to the rest of the world what is best about the United States, our compassion, innovation, courage, and willingness to work together with others to tackle world problems. The process of selection insures that the world is given access to America’s most talented and charismatic future leaders. In the last analysis, both parties, the grantee and the individual with whom he or she interacts, benefit immensely.
Dr. Mai’a Cross, an assistant professor of international relations at the University of Southern California, spent the second semester of the academic year in Belgium and France conducting research on defense and security in the European Union. She originally planned on interviewing 50 individuals, mostly people at the level of EU generals, admirals, and ambassadors. Her work progressed so quickly that she was able to complete some 80 interviews during the five-month period. In addition to her research, she also presented on the European Defence Agency at a conference in Maastricht that dealt with agency formation in the EU. In Paris, she was affiliated with the EU Institute for Security Studies, where she was the first American to publish with the institute. She plans to have a book published by the end of 2010. She says of her stay:
Overall, this has been an incredibly fulfilling experience, and one I would hope to repeat in the future. I was pleased to experience over and over again, on the part of local professors and policy-makers, such a welcoming attitude towards my scholarly endeavors. They seemed genuinely happy to generously set time aside to speak with an American professor.
Ms. Jennifer Hadden, an advanced doctoral student in political science from Cornell University, spent the academic year at the Climate Action Network Europe in Brussels conducting research on civil society participation in EU climate change policy-making. Through a combination of interviews, participant observation, and document analysis, she found significant evidence of the ways in which civil society actors pressure institutional actors, and where there are limits to their influence. She was particularly pleased with the opportunities she had to do direct observation of civil society organizing around the EU political process. As a result of the extensive support she received from Climate Action Network Europe, she was able to observe civil society activities at both the European Commission Stakeholder Consultation and the United Nations Framework convention on Climate Change Conference in Poznan. The Executive Committee granted her a four-month extension to allow her to attend the climate change conference in Copenhagen in December.
Ms. Stephanie Kent, an advanced doctoral student in communication from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, spent the academic year conducting research for her dissertation on simultaneous interpretation and shared identity in the European Parliament. Her stay here enabled her to collect the information for her dissertation, but more importantly, it connected her with the people and resources to learn about the information that she didn’t know she needed until she got here. In addition to her research at the Parliament, she took Dutch courses, presented on her research to the graduate students in the European Master’s program at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and to the students in the translation program at the Universiteit Gent. She says simply, “Without the Fulbright network I doubt I would have been able to develop as much project-specific depth nor as broad understanding of the social relevance of the findings.”
Ms. Amina Merchant, who received her medical degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago, was in the United Kingdom conducting comparative research on health policy at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Her project involved looking at U.S. health policy and EU health policy, specifically in terms of access and outcomes of health care. She also spent three months in Copenhagen working with the Danish Ministry of Health to learn more about the Danish health care system. She had an excellent and extremely productive year and returned to the U.S. to enroll in a Master’s program in public health.
Ms. Vanja Petricevic, an advanced doctoral student in political science at Georgia State University, was at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels for 12 months doing research on the effects of EU educational campaigns on ethnic minority policy making. Her project focused on trying to determine if the EU’s “democratization through education” strategy is having any direct effect on efforts to protect minorities’ rights and codify anti-discrimination standards in individual countries. She conducted her research in Belgium and Austria. Being at the heart of the EU, Brussels provided excellent opportunities to learn more about the policy issues. Austria, on the other hand, with its long history and extensive experience with ethnic minorities, gave her a multitude of opportunities for original data collection. She completed her project successfully in September and returned to the U.S. to complete her dissertation. She says of her year,
Endorsed with an opportunity to leverage the expertise of the individual scholars through face-to-face interviews, participation in conferences and discussion forums, while complementing my study through archival research at various institutions throughout the European Union was of great benefit to my current and future academic and professional progress. Aside from my academic progress, I have met people with whom I have become close friends and with whom I am looking forward to stay in contact for a long time to come.
Dr. Scott Sprenger, an associate professor of European Studies at Brigham Young University, spent four months in Paris at the CNRS where he conducted research on language policy in the EU. His project involved a comparative study of how various nations (France, Belgium, Romania and Sweden) have chosen to implement the European Commission’s proposals on multilingualism, a new focus since 2007 by the Commission to forge a pan-European identity. He analyzed the alignment between national documentation on language policy and EU policy by interviewing educators and administrators in each country on their perceptions of and attitudes toward recent EU language policy. He made great progress in his research, as well as having the time to prepare two articles for publication.
Dr. Megan Walline, an attorney with the U.S. Department of the Interior in Washington, DC, spent five months in Sweden at the Stockholm International Water Institute. Her project, in two parts, focused first on EU organizations and laws related to water quality, interstate water distribution, and conflict resolution among EU member states that share water resources. Aferwards, she compared that body of law to interstate water law in the western, arid, United States and with U.S. implementation of the Clean Water Act. She felt that her time in Stockholm was extremely well spent and she greatly appreciated the assistance she received from her Swedish colleagues at the Institute.
