Elena Maker Castro, assistant professor of psychology, and Michel Droge, visiting assistant professor of art and visual culture, have both earned Fulbright fellowships for the 2026-2027 academic year. They join a large group of 15 乐播传媒 students and one recent alumna who recently received Fulbright Student international exchange awards for 2026鈥�2027.
Elena Maker Castro will spend time at the Universidad Nacional Aut贸noma de Mexico in Mexico City, working with collaborators to explore adolescent and young adult sociopolitical development throughout Mexico City.
鈥淪ociopolitical development is the way that young people develop critical social analysis of the systems and structures around us,鈥� Maker Castro said. This theory of youth civic engagement further explores how young people 鈥渆ngage in action to challenge and transform inequitable systems.鈥�
The Fulbright fellowship will enable Maker Castro to look at sociopolitical development beyond the US, helping to extend research in a field of study that tends to be rooted in our own national context.
鈥淲e need to move beyond that narrow context and think about what sociopolitical development looks like across different kinds of national cultural environments,鈥� she said.
Her time in Mexico City will allow her to bring more cross-cultural research to her classes 鈥� most directly to her course 鈥淵outh Sociopolitical Development.鈥� In courses like 鈥淒evelopmental Psychology鈥� and 鈥淓ducational Psychology,鈥� Maker Castro works to draw in structural and cultural factors that impact development. For example, 鈥渞eligion, family values, experiences with violence, experiences with belonging and discrimination might inform how youth think and act against injustice and inequity,鈥� she said.
鈥淚n psychology, we can risk thinking about the individual absent their context,鈥� Maker Castro said. She anticipates that the support from Fulbright along with collaboration with students and faculty in Mexico City will energize her context-informed work when she returns to 乐播传媒.
Michel Droge received a joint Fulbright award in art and design to work in Greece and Iceland, where they will embark upon a project entitled 鈥淟ight, Salt and Stone鈥� in collaboration with marine scientists at the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research鈥檚 Institute of Oceanography in Greece and at the University of Akureyri in Iceland.
This project, which will culminate in exhibitions in both countries along with public programming, is an extension of Droge鈥檚 recent work, which has focused on the deep sea as inspiration for their paintings. Droge is familiar with making art as a result of collaboration with scientists, having worked as an artist depicting deep-sea research in collaboration with Beth Orcutt, vice president for research and senior research scientist at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Boothbay, Maine.
鈥淥ver the past five years I’ve been doing deep-sea research and making work around that,鈥� Droge said. 鈥淚’m now climbing out of the ocean onto the land. So the deep sea I looked at was more of an unconscious and the land is that liminal space.鈥�
Droge鈥檚 work with scientists means that they are looking at the ocean both scientifically and metaphorically as they travel to two islands 鈥� Iceland and Greece 鈥� that are a part of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
鈥淥ver the past five years I’ve been doing deep-sea research and making work around that,鈥� Droge said. 鈥淚’m now climbing out of the ocean onto the land. When researching the deep sea, I thought a lot about the metaphor of the unconscious dream state mind. My newer work will be exploring tidal marshes and rivers and become a metaphor for the liminal space between the dream world and the tangible world, the unconscious realms and the conscious, the unseen becoming visible.鈥�
Droge鈥檚 time working with scientists shows up not only in their painting, but impacts the ways that they approach the classroom and the curriculum. “To have time to really immerse myself in my research is such a gift, such an honor, and it’s such an important thing for both my practice, but also the rest of my teaching career.鈥�
Faculty Featured
Michel Droge
Elena G. Maker Castro
Assistant Professor of Psychology
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