2024-2025 Fulbright Alumni Project Fund Awardees
The Fulbright Commission in Ireland offers five €1000 grants each year to support Fulbright Alumni projects and events. All Irish and U.S. Fulbright Alumni are welcome to apply when the competition is open. Projects and events should be relevant to the applicant’s professional activities and have an Ireland-U.S. focus. We particularly welcome impactful community projects that focus on diversity, equality and inclusion, in line with the Fulbright ethos. The deadline for the 2024-2025 competition has passed.
2024-2025 Fulbright Alumni Project Fund Awardees
Brigittine M. French
Current Organisation: Grinnell College
Fulbright Year & Host Organisation: 2012, Dublin City University, SALIS
Remembering U.S. African American Civil Rights Struggle in Northern Ireland: Lessons for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
The purpose of this proposal is to support a 5 day workshop that examines how the U.S. Civil Rights Movement is remembered Northern Ireland today and consider how these remembered understandings have insights that can be applied to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts in U.S. and Irish Universities. The Fulbright Alumni grant will support a binational working group from Grinnell College and Dublin City University, including: Professor Brigittine French, Assistant Vice President for Global Education (Grinnell); Professor Agnes Maillot, Head of School, (DCU); Mr. Marc Reed, Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer (Grinnell); and Dr. Fiona Murphy, Program Chair for MA in Refugee Integration (DCU).
The first two of the workshop will take place at DCU to discuss relevant research; the third day will be spent in Belfast meeting with and interviewing local leaders of the Civil Rights movement; the fourth day will be spent in Derry/Londonderry meeting with and interviewing local leaders. The final day we will return to Dublin to outline key findings and to make concrete plans for next stages in the project, which will include grant applications, professional presentations, and ideas for implementation in DEI capacities on both of our campuses.
Emma Penney
Current Organisation: ATU Sligo
Fulbright Year & Host Organisation: 2021, Howard University
Picturing Working-Class Students
This event will platform working-class student stories from the U.S. and Ireland. The collaborators, Professor Michelle Fazio (UNC Pembroke) and Dr Emma Penney (ATU Sligo) are both first-generation students, now tenured academics, who found kindred spirits in their own working-class student cohort. As former leaders of the Working-Class Studies Association, they will collaborate on a project supporting working-class students. ATU Sligo has the highest number of disadvantaged students in Ireland and almost half of UNC students identify as first generation. This event will be a global first of its kind in mapping similar experiences amongst these students. Using Fazio’s ‘Pictured-Stories’ methodology, students from ATU and UNC will be invited to bring along a photograph that tells a story or illuminates distinct aspects of their working-class lives. The creative output – a short film piece - will cast the student stories over the images they brought to the workshop. The film will then become a resource at ATU, UNC and further afield. This project is unique in how it responds to a central tension in EDI/DEI globally wherein class is often the only category we do not celebrate, and so often erase as part of well-meaning access initiatives.
John Gilmore
Current Organisation: University College Dublin
Fulbright Year & Host Organisation: 2022/2023, University of California San Francisco
Alliance for Inclusive Sexual and Gender Minority Health: Uniting Experts and Communities for LGBTQ+ Wellbeing
In recognition of challenges confronting the health and wellbeing of sexual and gender minorities (SGM/LGBTQ+ communities), I propose an event "Alliance for Inclusive SGM Health." This initiative aims to convene a diverse coalition comprising global experts, early career researchers, healthcare professionals, community organisations, to collaboratively address the health and wellbeing needs of SGM populations. The keynote for this event will be given by a U.S. Fulbright Scholar, and the event will also showcase Irish research promoting health and wellbeing of LGBTQ+ communities as well as convene an expert panel discussion focussed on supporting early career researchers and community organisations.
By harnessing the collective expertise, passion, and resources of all participants, we aspire to effect meaningful and sustainable change that fosters the holistic wellbeing of SGM communities globally. The proceedings will be proposed for a special issue on LGBTQ+ Health with the Journal of Public Health Nursing.
The event will also propose to act as a relaunch for the Fulbright Prism Ireland group.
Brian D. Burns
Current Organisation: New York State Unified Court System
Fulbright Year & Host Organisation: 2018, Dublin City University
Courts as Agents of Social Change: promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Justice System
The project is a symposium featuring a key-note speaker to address how the courts can act as agents of societal change by promoting the ideals of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the justice system - followed by a panel discussion of the topic. The panel will consist of judges, legal scholars, and court administrators from Ireland, the United States, Canada and Africa. The panel will address policy changes or actions already taken by the courts in their country and whether they have observed any demonstrable results from those changes in minority communities on rates of incarceration, access to justice, treatment by law enforcement, or reductions in employment or housing discrimination based on race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or gender identification. The panelists will identify any existing obstacles within their justice systems to making further changes. They will also be asked to discuss the impact of immigration on DEI initiatives. Audience members will have the opportunity to pose additional questions to the panel.
Judith Harford
Current Organisation: University College Dublin
Fulbright Year & Host Organisation: 2018, Boston College.
Civics and human rights education in schools in Ireland and the US: Implications for democracy and participatory citizenship
This project explores evolving curricular initiatives in Ireland and the U.S. and their implications for democracy and participatory citizenship. Professor Harford will work with five partner schools, examining the perspectives of teachers and senior cycle students on the extent to which the Politics and Society curriculum promotes international human right standards and the values of pluralist democracy. Prof Jack Schneider, University of Massachusetts Amherst, working with five U.S. schools, will also examine the perspectives of teachers and high school students on the civics curriculum running in schools in Massachusetts. The goal of the comparative analysis will be to analyse and share learning on which aspects of the curricula best serve to equip young people to positively reflect and engage in civic life and to identify potential gaps arising. A shared learning day at UCD will be held in UCD in April 2025 to showcase the findings of the study.
Cay Anderson-Hanley
Current Organisation: Union College New York
Fulbright Year & Host Organisation: 2012, University of Galway
Move it & use it: Dancing, music & more for brain health, elders fostering engagement from Ireland to the USA & back again (postponed from 2022)
My research focuses on the benefits of interactive physical and cognitive exercise for brain health, especially for older adults. Dancing can be an excellent form of exercise for people of all ages. As a follow-up to the study we conducted during my Fulbright in Galway, I propose to pilot the engagement of older adults in Irish dance and music through a workshop on non-competitive Irish dance for all generations. I propose to enlist talented elders who I have connections with that have fostered community engagement in Irish dance and music in the US: one who has taught and choreographed Irish dance for all generations and one who has composed music based on his mother's journey from Ireland to the USA. They will work together with a talented elder who hosts a radio show in Ireland, to engage and teach a multi-generational workshop so that all participants can practice and enjoy invigorating Irish dance and music that has traveled from Ireland to the U.S. and back again.
Past events supported by the Alumni Project Fund
2023-2024 Fulbright Alumni Project Fund Awardees:
Ingrid Hess
Current Organisation: University of Massachusetts Lowell
Fulbright Year & Host Organisation: 2021 University College Cork, 2018 Mary Immaculate, Limerick
Go Green! Teaching Environmental Sustainability to Children
I will create a book and exhibition on sustainability with professors at Queen’s University Belfast. This work builds on the environmental sustainability project for children that I created while I was a Fulbright Specialist at University College Cork. This current project will teach children how and why they can be important participants in environmental sustainability and provides important teaching tools for elementary school instructors. My university, the University of Massachusetts Lowell, is working to strengthen both our Irish partnerships and our sustainability practices. Ireland has been at the forefront of sustainability practices so these dual goals pair well. But for these practices to last in perpetuity, they must filter into the community. The youngest among us need to be welcomed into and educated about the environmental movement. Teachers need materials that help them create dialogue with their young students about sustainability.
Queen’s University Belfast Sustainability Conference will take place from 18-20 April, 2024. Associate Professor Hess's solo exhibition will open the Sustainability Conference at Queen’s University Belfast on 18 April from 5:30-8pm. On Friday, 19 April Professor Hess will deliver a public lecture on how her work focuses on sustainability.
Art exhibition exploring plastic waste kicks off sustainability and arts festival at Queen's WATCH HERE
The exhibition, which launched on Thursday 18 April, showcases work from US artist and associate professor of Graphic Design at the University of Massachusetts Lowell Ingrid Hess, and highlights the challenge microplastics pose for our oceans. Ingrid has teamed up with local social enterprise Bryson Recycling for the exhibition, who have provided 2,000 used plastic bottles for the art piece.
Full of Wonder or Full of Plastic? You decide.
Dr Catherine Leen (Trinity College Dublin) in collaboration with Dr Melissa Hidalgo (California State University Long Beach)
Fulbright Year & Host Organisation: 2007-2008 University of California Santa Barbara
From Potatoes to Tacos: How Mexican Food is Making Waves in Ireland LISTEN HERE
Photo ‘Picado Mexican Pantry, Dublin’ by Lily Ramírez-Foran.
This three-part podcast focuses on Mexican food in Irish culture as a reflection of the increasing diversity of Irish society while also considering issues such as migration and intercultural exchange. It will focus both on Mexican food in Ireland and on the influence of the Mexican diaspora’s food culture on the United States and on Mexican food internationally. The podcast will address key developments in Irish and U.S. society, including transnational encounters and culinary hybridity. The podcast will showcase the relevance of Chicanx studies to Irish culture by highlighting how Mexican and Mexican-American food increases the diversity of Irish culture. It will be used for our undergraduate courses at Trinity College Dublin and California State University, as an educational tool that creates an exchange of knowledge, bringing Ireland and the United States together through conversations with academics from Ireland and the United States and food professionals in Ireland whose gastronomic expertise spans Mexico, Ireland and the United States. In an era where discourse about migration both in Ireland and the United States is decidedly negative, we hope to provide a counternarrative that uses food as a lens through which to celebrate diversity and intercultural exchange.
Through four episodes, this podcast takes us on a journey through the multicultural history of food in Ireland, with a special focus on the emerging Mexican food scene in Dublin and beyond. We journey from Dublin Castle in the 16th and 17th centuries, to Cal-Mex and Tex-Mex food in the United States, to the emergence of Mexican food in Dublin twenty years ago, to the current popularity of Mexican and Mexican-American street food. Your hosts Dr Catherine Leen, Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies at Trinity College Dublin, and Dr Melissa Hidalgo, Lecturer in Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies at California State University, Long Beach, meet historians, food critics and food producers in this podcast generously funded by the Fulbright Commission in Ireland.
Episode One: We speak to Dr Susan Flavin, Associate Professor of History at Trinity College Dublin. Susan takes us back in time to the 16th and 17th centuries in Ireland to reveal an unexpectedly diverse and multicultural food history, including turkeys, fancy vegetables but surprisingly little fish.
Episode Two: We meet Daniel Hernández, the food critic of the Los Angeles Times. From Cal-Mex to Tex-Mex through Taco Bell and Baja fish tacos, Daniel tells us how Mexican food provides a window into Mexico’s multicultural past and dynamic present. He suggests how we can be open to transnational culinary experiments in Mexican cuisine while honoring the past.
Episode Three: Lily Ramírez-Foran, the madrina of Mexican food in Ireland, shares her journey from Monterrey to Dublin and how her food pantry Picado draws on her family’s rich tradition of making tortillas. From adapting recipes to a rainy climate to sharing her love of Mexican food with Ireland, Lily explains the power of food to bring people together and enhance our lives.
Episode Four: Scott Holder, the founder of Los Chicanos Taquería, tells us about how he brought L.A.-inspired street tacos to Dublin through his travels to the United States and Mexico and his inspiration from Chicano food culture. His adventure in truck transportation and the challenges of making tacos in the rain are all part of the journey.
Laura Marshall Clark
Current Organisation: University of Houston
Fulbright Year & Host Organisation: 2020 (COVID delay) completed in 2021 at University College Cork
Vertical Shift: The Way Across
Vertical Shift The Way Across is a dissolution of time and perceptions of peoples and cultures an ocean apart. It is a collaborative project to develop student writers and deepen Irish-Indigenous relationships in a cross-cultural, student literary exchange of graduate creative writing students at University College Cork and Native American students at the University of Oklahoma.
Irish and Native creative writing students will first explore Irish and tribal histories, cultures, and contemporary issues about one another, and make personal connections among the cohort. Guided by the project’s author and their respective university mentors, students will then respond to this experience through poetry and short fiction in a digital anthology. The collection of written works by students will premiere online on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 2024. UCC will host a public gathering for community engagement on March 19, 2024, to debut the anthology. Project author Laura Marshall Clark (Mvskoke) will travel to Ireland for the event and to meet participating Irish students.
Oran Kennedy
Current Organisation: Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
Fulbright Year & Host Organisation: 2008 - Mount Sinai Medical School, NY
Our team of Fulbright Alumni Dr. Oran Kennedy (2008), Dr. Natalie McEvoy (2022) and Prof. James Ankrum (2022)] are proposing to host an event in RCSI to raise awareness on the importance of skin-tone in the treatment/research of skin conditions/wound-healing. Many clinical skin assessments focus on the appearance and responses of light-toned skin only. Also, from a research perspective, wound-healing processes can differ depending on skin tone. We will highlight this spectrum of difference and encourage attendees to consider it during the development of new assessments, treatments and therapies. Our event will be co-hosted by the Equality Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) team in RCSI. Our first speaker Dr. Natalie McEvoy is a member of the RCSI Skin Wounds & Trauma Research centre (SWaT), which is a leading group in this field. The second speaker, Prof. James Ankrum leads a regenerative medicine programme, with a focus on skin/wound-healing, at the University of Iowa. The third speaker, Prof. Sarah Snelling leads the Soft Tissue Repair Group at St Hilda's College, Oxford University - and recently developed a world-wide network to specifically account for ancestral differences in human tissues to enhance the global the applicability of her research. Light refreshments will be provided.
Kenneth D. Ward
Current Organisation: University of Memphis
Fulbright Year & Host Organisation: 2016; Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
Ireland has been a global leader in reducing tobacco use but 20% of Irish men and women 15 years of age and older continue to smoke, leading to more than 4500 premature deaths each year. Rates of smoking, and more recently, vaping, are especially high in marginalized groups, including the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and others (LGBTQ+) community. Smokers who identify as LGBTQ+, compared to non-LGBTQ+ smokers, are as interested in quitting but less successful in doing so. Reasons for these disparities in Ireland are unclear but data from other European countries and the U.S. suggest greater nicotine dependence, targeted marketing of tobacco products, stress induced by prejudice and discrimination, and difficulty accessing compassionate health services all play a role. Ireland’s new National Stop Smoking Clinical Guidelines to Help People Stop Smoking does not address the needs of the LGBTQ+ community specifically, but there is interest from national public health leaders and LGBTQ+ advocates to better understand the needs of this community and improve delivery of cessation services. To advance this effort, we propose to convene key stakeholders, including public health researchers, cessation specialists, and LGBTQ+ health advocates for a half-day virtual summit in May 2024.
Quitting Together with Pride Webinar, 29 May 2024, open to the public, Register HERE.
Previous events supported by the Fulbright Alumni Project Fund
May 2023: An online cross-cultural panel discussion about the Men’s Shed movement and an exhibition of creative works made at Men’s Sheds throughout Ireland took place in conjunction with Ireland’s Bealtaine Festival. Panelist Barry Golding, renowned researcher of the Men’s Shed movement, gave an overview of the Men’s Shed movement in a variety of different countries. An exhibition of the creative work made at Men’s Sheds throughout Ireland was displayed at the Limerick School of Art and Design. Contact Melinda Heinz for further information.
*The Irish Men’s Sheds documentary was selected by the Catalyst International Film Festival in March 2023.
**The Irish Men’s Sheds documentary was selected by the Boroondara Senior Film Festival in Australia in August 2023.
“Life Wouldn't be as Full without the Shed”: New directions for men in retirement published in the Journal of Elder Policy on 06 June 2024.
26 October 2022: Children's Dental Health Awareness Event entitled 'Fulbright Smiling Children 2022' in The Faculty of Dentistry, RCSI.
Fulbright Alum Professor Jeff Dean was awarded €1,000 grant made available to support Fulbright Alumni projects and events. This free and interactive event provided practical, simple and up-to-date information to parents in Ireland on how to create and maintain good oral health for children throughout their lives. Contact Prof. Jeff Dean for further details.
17 May 2022: 'Towards diverse and inclusive policing: Practitioners and Researchers in conversation' (Online)
Fulbright Alum Dr Aoife Delaney is bringing Fulbrighters and researchers from policing organisations across Ireland and the US together to share ideas. The programme will highlight trailblazing research in the area of policing and diversity. Contact Dr Delaney for further details.
15-16 March 2022: 'Ireland Masterclass in Health Economics' at UCD
Fulbright Alum Dr John Cawley and collaboraters are coordinating a Masterclass where prominent senior researchers will share their cutting-edge research with early-career health economists. Further details
7 April 2022 ‘Meeting the Needs of Parents in Pregnancy and Parenting after Loss’ (Online)
Fulbright Alum Dr Joann M. O'Leary and collaborators will host free online workshops on April 7/26, and May 12, 2022. These events will provide training for organizations working with bereaved parents on how to support parents and siblings at the time of loss. The project will also further important research in this area. To book a place email mgt.murphy@ucc.ie
In 2021, Fulbright Alum Lisa Nic an Bhreithimh worked with LGBTQ+ educational charity ShoutOut to organise a panel discussion on the topic of Queer Decolonisation. Speakers included Katlego Kai Kolanyane-Kesupile, Timothy R. Bussey, Ph.D. and Alber Saborío. The event was moderated by Mpho Mokotso. Watch the event back here: ShoutOut: Queer Decolonisation | Panel Discussion