Faculty Fulbright Award Recipients to Expand International Collaborations
Richard Eaton, Wilson de Lima Silva, Benjamin Lawrance, Diana Liverman, and Jonathon Reinhardt
Congratulations to Wilson de Lima Silva, Benjamin Lawrance, Diana Liverman, and Jonathon Reinhardt, who received Fulbright funding to conduct international research on topics including multilingual interactions, African Studies curriculum, climate change, and game-based language learning. Historian Richard Eaton also received a Fulbright to conduct research in India but needed to decline the award.
The Fulbright Program was created to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. The Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program sends approximately 800 American scholars and professionals per year to approximately 130 countries, where they lecture and/or conduct research in a variety of fields.
Richard Eaton, Department of History
History Professor Richard Eaton received, but had to decline, a Fulbright Award to India to study the ethnogenesis of Rajput warrior groups in the Sultanate of Malwa (15th and 16th century). Eaton, who is widely regarded as one of the world's top authorities on pre-modern India, also planned to study the Persianate aesthetic sensibilities in the sultanate as reflected in the architecture of the capital of Mandu and its provincial outposts.
Wilson de Lima Silva, Department of Linguistics
Wilson de Lima Silva and a Desano language consultant in the Timbó Community (Colombia).
Wilson de Lima Silva, assistant professor in the Department of Linguistics, received a Fulbright to conduct research in Colombia, starting January 2023. Hosted by the Universidad de los Andes, de Lima Silva will document multilingual practices among speakers of endangered Tukanoan languages in Colombia. de Lima Silva will collaborate with and provide training to community members interested in documenting and revitalizing their languages.
The Departamento del Vaupés, Colombia, is one of the most linguistically diverse places in the western Amazon. However, most of the languages in the region are considered highly endangered. With his Fulbright, de Lima Silva will analyze multilingual interactions, and survey speakers’ language ideologies and language use. While some of the collected data are typical of a language documentation project, other kinds of data are more unusual, in particular those required for detailed analysis of code-switching and language mixing.
Benjamin Lawrance, Department of History
History Professor Benjamin Lawrance received a Fulbright to South Africa for his project “African Studies from the Ground Up: Curriculum, Programming, and Research in Interdisciplinary Continent-Wide African Studies.” This hybrid teaching and research project is a collaboration between Lawrance and the faculty partner host, Dr. Vusumuzi R. Kumalo at Nelson Mandela University, or NMU.
Lawrance, who is the editor-in-chief of African Studies Review, will help design and teach a new interdisciplinary continent-wide African Studies curriculum for instruction at the undergraduate and graduate level. He will also help develop and launch a program of mentorship and career development targeting early-career scholars and teachers in the Faculty of Humanities at NMU.
Lawrance will also conduct research on the late South African writer Dugmore Boetie, culminating in a co-authored publication and interdisciplinary digital resources and pedagogical materials.
Diana Liverman, School of Geography, Development & Environment
Diana Liverman, emeritus Regents Professor in the School of Geography, Development & Environment, received a US-Canada Fulbright to visit the University of Ottawa as the Fulbright Canada Research Chair in Environmental Policy at the Institute of the Environment in fall 2022.
Liverman will be doing research and writing on earth system justice, especially the trade-offs and possible transformations of reducing environmental degradation while ensuring energy, food, and water for all. She will also be looking at the impacts of climate change on the service and manufacturing sector in North America.
“I am looking forward to (re) learning more about Canadian environmental issues and interacting with colleagues at the University of Ottawa and other nearby universities,” Liverman said. “It is a way to revisit my early career when I did my MA in environmental policy and drought impacts at the University of Toronto.”
Jonathon Reinhardt, Department of English
English Professor Jonathon Reinhardt, who is in the English Applied Linguistics program which offers the MA in Teaching English as a Second Language, received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar award to go to Germany next year to teach and collaborate on games and language learning. Reinhardt researches technology-enhanced language learning, especially with digital games and social media, as well as digital literacies and critical language awareness.
From April to August 2023. Reinhardt will be at Leuphana University of Lüneburg teaching about games and language learning and collaborating on a project to develop a virtual exchange network for game-based language learning and teaching. The network will connect language-teaching students around the world to learn about game-based language learning by experiencing, designing, and discussing gameful language learning experiences together.