Skip to main content

IU scholars awarded Fulbright grants to conduct research abroad

For Immediate Release Dec 6, 2018

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Seven Indiana University faculty members have been awarded fellowships through the Fulbright Program, the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government.

Micol Seigel
Micol Seigel is conducting research and teaching activities on race, class and the prison system at the University of São Paulo in Brazil.Photo by Chaz Mottinger, Indiana University

The awards support the faculty members’ travel to Brazil, Kenya, India, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain and the Netherlands.

“The Fulbright programs offer a wide range of fellowships for faculty and graduate students, and IU scholars have been successful at all levels,” said Hannah Buxbaum, IU vice president for international affairs. “The distinguished recipients represent disciplines across the university. We are proud of their achievements and honored that they have been chosen to represent Indiana University around the world.”

The IU faculty Fulbright recipients and their projects include:

IU Bloomington

  • James Kelly, an associate professor in The Media School, will also travel to Eldoret, Kenya, to conduct research and take photographs for a book on IU’s 28-year partnership with Moi University. The Academic Model Providing Access to Healthcare, or AMPATH, is an academic medical partnership between 15 North American academic health centers led by the IU School of Medicine and Moi University. Kelly’s project will showcase the care that AMPATH’s health workers provide to their 4 million clients. He will also teach two journalism classes at Moi.
  • Leandra Lederman, the William W. Oliver Professor of Tax Law and director of the tax law program at the IU Maurer School of Law, was awarded a Fulbright award for research at the University of Luxembourg. She will conduct a comparative study of the effect of increased transparency by Luxembourg and the United States as it relates to tax rulings granted to multinational companies. The study will build on Lederman’s 15 years of research on tax enforcement, which has produced seven articles, a leading textbook and a student guide to corporate taxation.
  • Arndt Schimmelmann, a senior scientist in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, will travel to Slovenia to work with scientists in that country and other European nations to develop new standards to help scientists forensically detect the origin and quality of certain foods, such as honey and olive oil, for which this information is frequently falsified. These standards will be developed and distributed globally by IU, the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria, and other partner institutions.
  • Micol Seigel, a professor in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of American Studies, was named the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in International Relations at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, where she taught an undergraduate course this summer focusing on race, class and the prison system in the United States. Seigel also traveled for research, spoke at other universities and held discussions with a group of people on work release from prisons across the country’s Paulista metropolitan region. She will return to Brazil to conduct additional work under the fellowship in early 2019.

IUPUI

Kyle Carpenter at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital
Kyle Carpenter, left, will assist in the study of burn injuries and their care at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret, Kenya.Photo by Katie Anderson
  • Robert G. Bringle, a Chancellor’s Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Philanthropic Studies at IUPUI, will travel to Ngee Ann Polytechnic in Singapore; the Autonomous University of Madrid in Spain; and the Vrije Universidad in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, to lecture and conduct research on institutionalizing community service learning at each university. This is Bringle’s second award from the Fulbright Program.
  • Kyle Carpenter, a general surgery resident at the IU School of Medicine, will travel to Eldoret, Kenya, to assist in the study of burn injuries and their care at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital. This work will include the creation of a burn registry at the hospital, the assessment of its current capacity for burn care, and the comparison of its current provision of care to standards for essential burn care delivery established under the World Health Organization.
  • Mohamed Razi Nalim, an executive associate dean for research and graduate programs at IUPUI, is serving as a visiting professor at Vellore Institute of Technology in Vellore, India, to mentor faculty in conducting high-impact research, expand American-inspired engineering and education and research in India, and support research on clean energy and automotive technology. He is also pursuing opportunities to create a student exchange program between IUPUI and Vellore Institute of Technology and studying the response of India’s engineering institutions and faculty to the challenges posed by environmental change.

Two IU Ph.D. students were also awarded Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowships from the Fulbright Program. The recipients are:

  • Jessica Storey-Nagy, a Ph.D. student in the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, who was awarded a fellowship to travel to Hungary for “Sovereign Voices: Decoding the Discursive Processes of National Identity Building in Modern-Day Hungary.”
  • Eric Layman, a Ph.D. student in the IU School of Education in Bloomington, who was awarded a fellowship to travel to Taiwan for “Autonomy and Indigeneity in Taiwan’s Aboriginal Education Policy.”

In addition, IU Bloomington and IUPUI are serving as host to six Fulbright scholars traveling to the U.S. under this year’s awards. The scholars, their areas of research and their home institutions are:

IU Bloomington

  • Nahuel Almeira, physics, National University of Córdoba, Argentina.
  • Yahuhen Dubrovin, judiciary system, Belarusian State University, Belarus.
  • Zhala Garibova, linguistics, Azerbaijan University of Languages, Azerbaijan.
  • Mira Nurmakhanova, banking, KIMEP University, Kazakhstan.
  • Marcela Slusarciuc, international relations, Stefan cel Mare University Suceava, Romania.

IUPUI

  • Juan Francisco Morales, pharmacy, National University of La Plata, Argentina.

The Fulbright Program was created to build relations between the U.S. and other countries to find solutions to global challenges and shared international concerns. Since its inception over 70 years ago, more 360,000 students, scholars, teachers, artists and scientists have traveled abroad under the program. Currently, it operates in over 160 countries worldwide.

Media Contact

IU Newsroom

Kevin Fryling

Senior Communications Consultant, Strategic Communications

More stories