Fulbright Forward

“Every place has a queer history.” Those are some of the impactful words shared by our guest today, Fulbright 2022-2023 U.S. Student Researcher to Chile, Sam Apostolopoulos. Sam’s Fulbright project focuses on understanding the legal history of LGBTQ+ rights in Chile and comparing that with the history of LGBTQ+ legal frameworks in the United States. Through this conversation, Sam shares a great de...

In this episode of Fulbright Forward, Kelli Swazey, D&I Liaison for Fulbright Programs in East Asia and the Pacific, talks story with grantees who are shaping the future of Fulbright by pushing the program to expand its engagement with issues of representation, inclusion, equity and justice as a core part of the Fulbright experience. The guests on this episode are members of the Taiwan DEI Com...

This episode features Fulbright Alumna Evi Mariani. Evi was a 2011 Hubert Humphrey Fellow from Indonesia at Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. Her critical work has been widely recognized, and she is the recipient of several prestigious journalism awards including a Society of Publishers in Asia award for excellence in public journalism, the Tasrif Award, the Indon...

On today’s podcast we feature esteemed Jewish Uruguayan Anthropologist, teacher, fiction author, and Fulbright alumna, Dr. Teresa Porzecanski. During today’s episode, Dr. Porzecanski and Fulbright WHA D&I Liaison, Jeremy Gombin-Sperling talk about her history of anthropological work in Uruguay on the Uruguayan Jewish population. In tracing this genealogy, we learn about Dr. Porzecanski’s effor...

In this episode of Fulbright Forward, we talk to Tamara Shogaolu, a Fulbright alumna whose work in filmmaking and immersive media disrupts the norm of uni-directional single narrative storytelling. Tamara’s many award-winning media projects integrate animation, VR, AR, and other immersive technologies in telling stories that are rarely given the space to be heard in today’s contemporary mediascape...

 On this episode of Fulbright Forward, we are shifting geographic location to Ghana in West Africa, and focusing on the work of current U.S. Fulbright Scholar to Ghana, Professor Candace Moore. Professor Moore is the Associate Clinical Professor in the Higher Education, Student Affairs, International Education Policy (HESI) program within the Department of Counseling, Higher Education, and Special...

In this episode of Fulbright Forward, Jeremy Gombin-Sperling, the Fulbright Diversity and Inclusion Liaison for Western Hemisphere Programs continues the conversation on English and language teaching in the Western Hemisphere with Bilingual Educator and alumna of the Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Program in Ecuador, Meilin Chong. During the episode, Meilin shares how her experiences as a bi...

In this episode, Lithuanian author, historian and activist Dalia Leinarte and Susanne Hamscha, EUR Diversity Coordinator, talk about feminism and women's rights in the Soviet Union and the Post-Soviet space. Dalia experienced the former Soviet Union as an insider and and met the restoration of the Independence of Lithuania as a young woman. Dalia interviewed a large number of women and wrote...

In this episode of Fulbright Forward, Fulbright Americas Diversity and Inclusion Liaison speaks with U.S. ETA alum to Guatemala, Jonathan Peraza Campos about the critical need to redefine and reimagine how folks from the United States conduct English teaching abroad, in particular within Latin America and the Caribbean. As Jonathan shares in the episode, this is about disrupting “ perceptions that...

In this episode, Sandra Eder (Berkeley University), Daniela Jauk (University of Akron), Simone Poetscher (OSTA), and Susanne Hamscha (Regional Diversity Coordinator EUR) talk about gender equality and higher education in the US and Austria. Sandra and Daniela share how gender, class, and age factored into their career decisions, while Simone speaks from her rich experience of working with research...

CW // This podcast contains discussion of violence, gun violence The Black Lives Matter movement, while initiated in response to the state of racial relations in the United States, has reverberated in societies around the world. With the growing awareness of the global relevance of the movement, the call to address the historical roots and realities of  contemporary violence and discrimination has...

Hera Jay Brown, a Fulbright-Schuman alum, and Susanne Hamscha, EUR Regional Diversity Coordinator, discuss the European Union's position on migration in this episode. What is the human cost of "fortress Europe," as the EU's response to migration is sometimes referred to? Why does it matter how we talk about migration and people who migrate? And which role does compassion play i...

In this episode of Fulbright Forward, Fulbright alumna of the U.S. Student Program to Jamaica, Abigail Ramsay, helps us explore the power of theater and storytelling in ways that go beyond entertainment. Through a rich sharing of her experiences in Jamaica and beyond, Abigail shares how theater and storytelling can be and perhaps should be seen more as mediums for critical community building that...

Fulbright Bulgaria alum Chris Curran and Susanne Hamscha, EUR Regional Diversity Coordinator, talk about the discrimination of Roma communities in Europe and in Bulgaria, in particular. Chris shares about his work with the Trust for Social Achievement , which seeks to improve access to housing and education for Roma people in Bulgaria. Chris also talks about how his job as an immigrants rights law...

Traveling social worker Sojourner White and Susanne Hamscha, EUR Regional Diversity Coordinator, talk about unpacking and navigating one's social identities abroad, reflecting on discrimination and privilege, and translating experience into action. Sojourner is the founder and creator of Sojournies , a travel education platform. She was a Fulbright ETA in Spain in 2016-17.

Similarly to many countries in the Western Hemisphere, the history of feminism in Brazil has been about moving towards a politic that centers and acknowledges how systems of oppression such as racism and classism impact and intersect with the violent sexism that encompasses the struggle of feminist action and thought, and towards a politic that captures the lived experience of cis and trans women...

Ronda Železný-Green , a digital learning and technology policy expert, and EUR Diversity Coordinator Susanne Hamscha talk about the intersection of race and gender in (higher) education, technology as a tool for achieving  equality, and the underrepresentation of women of color in higher education in the UK. Ronda acts as a consultant to the US-UK Fulbright Commission and from 2013-14, she held a...

“Ni una menos, ni una muerte más.” Not one woman less, not one more death. This phrase has functioned as one of the slogans both through social media and political discourse in the movement to fight gender-based violence, and to protect the lives of trans and cisgender women across Latin America. From its start in Argentina in 2015, ni una menos capture the ongoing struggle for gender equity and t...

Barriers to education still remain across the Asia-Pacific region for individuals from underrepresented backgrounds, and those from minority and marginalized communities. In this episode, we speak with Anggiasari Puji Aryati, a politician and activist working for gender equality and disability rights, and Ajeng Herliyanti, a mental health provider, yoga teacher, and gender activist.  Ajeng and Ang...

In this episode, Czeslaw Walek, alumnus of the Czech Fulbright Commission, and EUR Diversity Coordinator Susanne Hamscha talk about LGBTQ equality, same-sex marriage in the Czech Republic, and  the LGBTQ rights movements in the US and in Europe. Czeslaw is the Chairman of Prague Pride and manager of Jsme Fér ("we are fair").

In this special episode, the Regional Diversity Coordinators Jeremy Gombin-Sperling (WHA), Kelli Swazey (EAP), and Susanne Hamscha (EUR) talk about their passion for diversity and inclusion work, the personal and professional experiences that led them to pursue a career in this field in the first place, and how they hope to contribute to moving Fulbright forward.

In this episode, Fulbright Germany alumnus Kenny Fries and EUR Diversity Coordinator Susanne Hamscha talk about disability and eugenic discourses during the Third Reich, when disabled people were systematically murdered in the campaign "Aktion T4." But eugenic discourses are alive and well, as Kenny explains with reference to the COVID-19 pandemic. Kenny Fries is an acclaimed writer and...

In this episode, Fulbright Poland alumna Margaret Ohia-Nowak and EUR Diversity Coordinator Susanne Hamscha talk about the representation of Black Polish people in texts and images, discursive discrimination and microaggressions, as well as Black activism in Poland. Margaret Ohia-Nowak is a linguist, human rights activist, and cross-cultural training facilitator. She received a Fulbright grant to c...

In this episode,  Fulbright Austria alumna Astrid M. Fellner and EUR Diversity Coordinator Susanne Hamscha talk about European and US borderlands,  the symbolic power of borders, and borders in times of Covid-19. Astrid M. Fellner is professor for North American Literary and Cultural Studies at Saarland University, Germany. She received a Fulbright grant to study at the University of Texas at Aust...