15 Princetonians awarded Fulbright

Fulbright grants were awarded to nine students from Princeton’s graduating Class of 2011, four graduate students and two other recent alumni. The grants enable them to study or teach abroad for the 2011-12 academic year. All 15 Fulbright scholars are currently in their host countries.

The nine members of the Class of 2011 are: Abigail Rood Bowman, who is working in Turkey; Rushabh Doshi, China; Joshua Franklin, Brazil; Mark Gray, Taiwan; Adam Hesterberg, Hungary; Victoria Hewitt, India; Aniela Pramik, Poland; Jarett Schwartz, the Czech Republic; and Zayn Siddique, Jordan.

The four graduate students who received a Fulbright grant are: Eno Compton, Japan; Jeffrey Kirkwood, Germany; Maribel Morey, Sweden; and Seiji Shirane, Japan.

In addition, two recent alumni are also abroad: Megan McGowan ’06, Italy; and Mariam Rahmani ’10, United Arab Emirates.

One of the Princeton Fulbright Scholarship recipients, Jeffrey Kirkwood, is a Ph.D. candidate in the German department and is a visiting junior fellow at the Internationales Kolleg fur Kulturtechnikforschung und Medienphilosophie at Bauhaus-Universitat in Weimar.

“Working at the IKKM provides a truly inimitable opportunity to participate in an international community of media theory scholars and to further the ongoing relationship between the Princeton Department of German and the IKKM which together have begun an annual International Princeton-Weimar Summer School for Media Studies. Next summer will be the second year, exploring the topic ‘Spaces of Media,’ ” Kirkwood said in an email.

Kirkwood said he will continue his work on his dissertation when he returns to Princeton.

Josh Franklin, an anthropology major as an undergraduate, explained in an email that “my Fulbright is a ‘full grant’ and requires only research — there is no teaching component. I will continue my thesis research, on the right to health in Brazil and transgender people who claim access to public health care.”

Franklin said he plans to apply to medical school upon the completion of his Fulbright program.

Like Josh Franklin, Maribel Morey, a graduate student in the history department, received a Fulbright grant for research only.

Morey is finishing her dissertation in Stockholm under Fulbright and American-Scandinavian Foundation grants. Her dissertation describes the Americans and Swedes who helped finance, organize, research and write Gunnar Myrdal’s 1944 work, “An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy.” “In the process of telling this story, the dissertation links the progressive era of comprehensive and objective applied social research with the moral overtones of the civil rights era,” Morey explained.

The Fulbright Program is the “flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government” and is designed to “increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries,” according to the program’s website.