Eight young ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College alumni, including seven new graduates, have been offered Fulbright Student awards for 2025–26. 

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ has been recognized as a Top Producer of Fulbright Student awards for 14 straight years, most recently in February for 2024–25.

“These accomplished Fulbright recipients embody the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ mission of commitment to responsible stewardship of the wider world,â€� said President Garry W. Jenkins. “We are immensely proud of and thrilled for our awardees, whose academic achievements, passion for intercultural understanding, and joy in exploration will enable them to build powerful connections between the people of the United States and the people of other countries.â€�

This year’s awardees have been offered Fulbright English teaching assistant grants for Germany, Rwanda, Spain, Switzerland, and Taiwan, and a Fulbright research award for Slovenia.

Each year, the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program offers over 400 awards in more than 135 countries for U.S. citizens to teach, conduct research and carry out professional projects around the world. 

“I have been inspired this year by seeing ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students and our young alumni lean into our world’s accelerating complexity,â€� said Robert Strong, director of national fellowships and lecturer in English. “It’s good to know that these ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Fulbrighters will be around the globe, representing the positive, problem-solving spirit of American leadership in learning and research.â€�

The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Fulbright Committee described these internationally minded young leaders as humble, enthusiastic, personable, curious — and exceptionally knowledgeable.

Claire Bohmer ’25

Claire Bohmer ’25, a biochemistry major from Steamboat Springs, Colo., has been offered a Fulbright study/research grant for Slovenia. 

Research Experience Includes: Bohmer studies Lyme disease with a place-based approach that combines lab research and local knowledge. At ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, she was a researcher in the lab of Paula Schlax, Stella James Sims professor of chemistry and biochemistry, as a National Institutes of Health INBRE fellow, investigating RNA and protein behavior in the Lyme disease–causing bacterium. 

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and Community Activities Include: Biology teaching assistant, STEM scholar, AESOP trip leader, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Public Health Initiative participant, and president of Chicks on Sticks women’s ski club.

Fulbright Research Purpose: To compare the primary bacterial transmitter of Lyme disease, Borrelia burgdorferi, as it appears in Europe versus the United States in order to better understand the pathogen’s structure and function, which could help establish more effective therapeutic treatments for Lyme disease.

In collaboration with the University of Primorska, in Koper, Slovenia, Bohmer will also observe how Slovenian communities combat Lyme disease using public health initiatives and disease research, to determine if such methods could serve as global models for other countries to implement as tick-borne diseases grow increasingly prevalent under climate change.

Plans for Host-Community Engagement in Slovenia: To volunteer at the Science Centre at the University of Primorska to share science with the general public, connect with local schools in Koper and work with elementary students to better understand the local knowledge of those living in tick-populated areas, and run with the Obala Ultra Trail group.

Plans After Fulbright: To attend medical school for pediatric care or pursue a master’s degree in biotechnology.

What the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Fulbright Committee Said: “Both her academic endeavors and her extracurricular activities keep her engaged in her community: She always seeks to connect what she loves to what she does.â€�

More About Bohmer: During a semester spent studying climate science in Patagonia, Bohmer stepped outside the lab to learn directly from ranchers, fishermen, and storekeepers, discovering that place is defined less by landscape than by the people and stories that shape it. 

As an emerging scientist with an interest in research, intervention, and disease management, Bohmer is driven by that sense of connection. “Genuinely connecting and listening to others may just be the solution to changing scientific narratives that no longer serve communities at large.�

Charles Breyfogle ’25

Charles Breyfogle ’25, a double major in politics and French and Francophone studies from Columbus, Ohio, has been offered a Fulbright English teaching grant for Switzerland.

Relevant Experience Includes: French-English translator with Maine’s Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project, French language teaching assistant, sailing instructor, and soccer coach.

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and Community Activities Include: Center for Purposeful Work peer advisor, former varsity soccer team member, and volunteer at Trinity Jubilee Center.

Plans for Host-Community Engagement in Switzerland: To join a community soccer team, coach or volunteer with youth soccer players, join outing clubs, offer English tutoring outside of the classroom, and volunteer for social service or environmental organizations.

Plans After Fulbright: Earn a law degree and work as an immigration lawyer serving French-speaking populations.

What the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Fulbright Committee Said: “Charlie is a quiet leader who makes the groups he is in much stronger through his skills in mediation. He will be a model for his students regarding community engagement and civic responsibility.â€�

More about Breyfogle: An avid traveler, Breyfogle has connected with friends around the world through the universal language of soccer. He joined Kansai Gaidai University’s team during his semester abroad in Japan and, despite knowing little Japanese when he arrived, became friends with Japanese students through bonding over the sport.

“Soccer has allowed me to create friendships and learn more about other cultures, whether immigrants to the U.S. or while traveling abroad. I now have a plethora of friends waiting to open their doors to me around the world — I too would do the same for them.�

Maple Buescher ’25

Maple Buescher ’25, a politics major from Cleveland Heights, Ohio, was offered a Fulbright English teaching grant for Spain. For 2025–26, she has chosen a different path and will serve as a Spanish teaching apprentice at the High Mountain Institute, a wilderness-based semester school in Colorado.

Relevant Experience Includes: Teaching assistant at an afterschool program for children from underserved populations in Spain, youth mentor with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Mid–Maine, and counselor at Reaching Heights orchestral camp. She completed an honors thesis analyzing nationalist rhetoric and changing understandings of nationalism in Galicia, Spain, from 2016 to 2024.

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and Community Activities Include: Ladd Library student access specialist, editor-in-chief of The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Student 2023–24, Outing Club trip leader, and club sailing team member. She graduated magna cum laude, with honors in politics and Phi Beta Kappa membership, and received the Charles A. Dana award.

Wes DeOreo ’25

Wes DeOreo ’25, a double major in politics and German from Westport, Conn., earned a Fulbright English teaching grant for Germany.

Relevant Experience Includes: Research aid studying transatlantic history at the University of Freiburg, in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany; English teaching volunteer at the Carl-Shurz-Haus in Freiburg; and head coach of PTSV Jahn Freiburg Pumas Lacrosse.

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and Community Activities Include: AESOP leader, rugby club president, Athletics student assistant, and Davis Fitness Center attendant.

Plans for Host-Community Engagement in Germany: Join community sports teams and reconnect with German friends and family.

Plans After Fulbright: To pursue a career in public service.

What the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Fulbright Committee Said: “Wes has a strong sense of service. Wes also has an impressive sense of humility and is eager to learn from his students through this experience.â€�

More about DeOreo: While teaching English during his semester abroad in Germany, DeOreo fielded students’ questions about life in America, including questions about gun violence, particularly sensitive to DeOreo in the aftermath of the October 2023 shootings in Lewiston.

“It will be my job to encourage my students to embrace their curiosity and see the classroom as a place where they have freedom to seek answers to these challenging questions.�

Ale’ia Gallego Calle ’25

Ale’ia Gallego Calle ’25, a politics major with minors in Chinese and Japanese from Waterbury, Conn., was offered a Fulbright English teaching grant for Taiwan in July.

Relevant Experience Includes: English tutor for elementary-aged ELL students, online private tutor, 2022–24 president of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Chinese Club, semester spent studying in Shanghai.

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and Community Activities Include: Office of Intercultural Education peer educator, first-generation peer mentor, co-founder of the Korean Intercultural Association.

Plans for Host-Community Engagement in Taiwan: To establish or support a bilingual storytelling club at a local library, organize field trips for students to local farms to support local agriculture and deepen students’ appreciation for how their food is created, and establish or join a program assisting students in pursuing higher education abroad.

Plans After Fulbright: Work with international organizations on humanitarian and social justice initiatives, ultimately pursuing a career in medicine and academia.

What the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Fulbright Committee Said: Ale’ia’s “experience organizing cultural events reveals her ability to engage diverse communities, crucial for positive representation. Her adaptability, evident from her study abroad experiences, ensures she can navigate cultural differences gracefully. These qualities, combined with her knack for cultural exchange, make [Ale’ia] an ideal ETA.â€�

More about Gallego Calle: Gallego Calle’s passion for cultural exchange and language learning began as a young child, when her family moved to the U.S. from Colombia and Gallego Calle taught her younger sister English by telling her stories.

As an English teaching assistant, she’ll again utilize storytelling to help her students learn. Gallego Calle says she is “not just aiming to understand Taiwan; I want to become a part of its story. By embracing new experiences, celebrating cultural differences, and finding common ground in unexpected places, I’ll bring the Fulbright mission of fostering mutual understanding as an ambassador to life.â€�

Madeleine Kwei ’25

Maddy Kwei ’25, a psychology major from Pasadena, Calif., earned a Fulbright English teaching grant for Taiwan.

Relevant Experience Includes: English teaching assistant in France and Nicaragua, psychology teaching assistant at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, and creator and leader of a six-week English language learning program with Families Forward Learning Center in Pasadena, Calif.

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and Community Activities Include: Over 100 hours of community-engaged learning experience mainly with youth in afterschool programs and classroom settings, community outreach fellow with the Harward Center for Community Engagement, women’s varsity golf team member, and Ladd Library access desk worker.

Plans for Host-Community Engagement in Taiwan: To encourage students to play sports with an emphasis on gender equality and volunteer with Special Olympics.

Plans After Fulbright: To pursue a master’s degree in counseling psychology, with the goal of working as a psychologist for diverse youth and people with Asian backgrounds.

What the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Fulbright Committee Said: “Maddy is passionate about working with youth and learning more about adolescent development, and skilled at communicating and efficiently solving problems.â€�

More about Kwei: Kwei spent several years of her childhood in Beijing, where the friendships she formed at her international school informed her passion for intercultural communication from an early age.

While showing Danish friends she met in Beijing around Maine, Kwei became aware that “Americans hold a high regard toward celebrating regional cultures and integrating diversity into everyday life. Learning to recognize the values and beliefs that make me an American (and the blind spots that I still have) deepens my curiosity to learn more about the world and how I can contribute as an informed global citizen.�

Helena Raddock ’24

Helena Raddock ’24, a politics major from Warren, Vt., has been offered a Fulbright English teaching assistant grant for Rwanda.

Relevant Experience Includes: Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition intern with the Rwandan Association of Maine; English language learning mentor to elementary school students; Lewiston High School tutor; Vermont Council on World Affairs participant; field organizer; study abroad in Cape Town, South Africa, with a human rights and multiculturalism program.

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and Community Activities Include: Center for Purposeful Work peer advisor; Snaggletooth literary magazine contributor; peer tutor for First-Year Seminars; “Get Out the Voteâ€� fellow for Harward Center for Community Partnerships. At commencement, she received the Maung Maung Gyi Award for Excellence in Politics with membership in Phi Beta Kappa, completing an honors thesis on “The Construction of Coloured Identities: Apartheid Nostalgia and the Politics of Memory.”

Plans for Host-Community Engagement in Rwanda: To offer career-guiding workshops for Rwandan citizens at the U.S. Embassy, create an English language learning book club, and volunteer with women’s empowerment organizations such as Rwanda Women’s Network or Empower Rwanda.

Plans After Fulbright: To pursue a master of arts degree in global affairs with a focus on gender, conflict, resolution, and peacemaking.

What the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Fulbright Committee Said: “Since learning that Rwanda has the world’s highest proportion of women in government positions, Helena has wanted to live in Rwanda and learn more about the role of women in Rwandan education and society.â€�

More about Raddock: Raddock’s passion for helping others learn languages is largely informed by her experience living with a host family in South Africa, who welcomed her and encouraged her as she learned the isiXhosa language, which was no easy task.

Last summer, she attended Middlebury College’s French language immersion program, which “deepened my passion for language learning and cultural immersion.�

“My goal is to foster an atmosphere where language learning is viewed as an opportunity for growth and connection, just as it was for me during my time with my homestay family.�

Emma Seitz ’25

Emma Seitz ’25, a double major in theater and history from Brooklyn, N.Y., has been offered a Fulbright English teaching grant for Germany.

Relevant Experience Includes: Study abroad and research assistant at Berlin International University of Applied Science, teacher assistant at the Grace Church Theater Department in New York City, children’s summer camp leader in New Paltz, N.Y., during COVID-19.

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and Community Activities Include: Merimanders a cappella, Musician Union treasurer and secretary, club volleyball, AESOP leader.

Plans for Host-Community Engagement in Germany: To facilitate cross-cultural communication through open discussions on contemporary issues and topics, join a music group and a theater group, and provide tutoring for several subjects including English and history.

Plans After Fulbright: To work as a teacher in the U.S. while pursuing a career in playwriting and script writing for television and film.

What the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Fulbright Committee Said: “Since returning from study abroad, Emma continued to read German news, watch German media, and speak the language whenever she could. She wrote her history thesis on the difference in generational guilt surrounding the Holocaust between East and West Germany. Emma will arrive in Germany with an excellent knowledge of its history, culture, and current events — and with an excitement to learn more.â€�

More about Seitz: While studying abroad in Germany, Seitz produced a short film for a final project in just three weeks, which required her to use her still-developing German to secure a filming permit from Berlin’s main transit company.

The experience was “hard and rewarding work,” she said. “I wanted to continue teaching and collaborating with Germans because of the challenge.â€� She’ll bring her experience studying and working in German to her role as an English teaching assistant, aiming to make her students feel supported and understood in the classroom.

Three ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ professors have earned competitive Fulbright U.S. Scholar fellowships to research and teach abroad in 2022–23.

• Professor of Politics Ã�slaug Ã�sgeirsdóttir will study the recent history of Iceland’s shifting policy priorities within the Arctic.
• Senior lecturer and Director of Secondary Teacher Education Anita Charles will bring her teaching expertise to an Indian university. 
• Professor of Psychology Amy Bradfield Douglass will compare potential differences in how eyewitnesses from Asian cultures and Westerners recall what they see.

The Fulbright program is the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program for accomplished students, scholars, artists, teachers, and professionals to study, teach, or pursue important research and professional projects around the world. 

The Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program makes more than 800 awards annually in more than 135 countries to teach, conduct research, and carry out professional projects. 

“Our faculty are curious, engaged, deeply thoughtful, and eager to explore and contribute across all kinds of boundaries, whether disciplinary, cultural, or geopolitical,� said Malcolm Hill, dean of the faculty and vice president for academic affairs.

He added, “The receipt of these Fulbrights is also a key indicator of the consequential and creative scholarship our faculty engage in. We also deeply appreciate how Fulbright-supported experiences help our faculty become ever more effective teachers, colleagues, and scholars upon their return.�

�slaug �sgeirsdóttir

Despite its chilly name, the island nation of Iceland did not always claim its Arctic-ness, at least in a geopolitical sense, explains Professor of Politics �slaug �sgeirsdóttir.

But in the early 2000s, disruptive events changed the country’s perspective. First came the 2006 closure of the U.S. Air Force Base in Keflavík. Then came the global financial crisis in 2008, and the growing realization of the outsized impact of climate change on the Arctic and its waters.

After that, “the government began to define its interests and priorities in the area,� explains �sgeirsdóttir, who will use a Fulbright–National Science Foundation Arctic Research Grant to return to her home country to study the shifts in the country’s Arctic policy between 2006 and 2021.

Those policy shifts, she says, have been by internal forces — â€œnew governments bringing in new voices and changing fiscal realitiesâ€� — and external ones, such as climate change. Her research project will be the first to analyze the evolution of Iceland’s Arctic policy over the 15-year period and to determine the impact of that evolution, both domestically and internationally.

Born and raised in Iceland, �sgeirsdóttir started her career as a journalist before turning to academia. In her 25 years as a scholar, she’s become an expert in how and why nations cooperate, instances where valuable fisheries straddle international boundaries or when countries have overlapping maritime boundaries.

Located almost entirely outside the 66-degree latitude that defines the Arctic Circle, Iceland is, geographically speaking, “a peripheral Arctic state,â€� explains Ã�sgeirsdóttir. 

But as they say, location, location, location. Sitting in the North Atlantic ecosystem, and by virtue of being the second-largest fisheries nation in Europe (after Norway), Iceland “plays a significant role economically and environmentally in the area,â€� explains Ã�sgeirsdóttir. 

With the thawing of the Arctic, nations inside and outside the Arctic Circle, including China, are now developing and announcing formal Arctic policies. Such documents are public, “but we still do not have a good understanding of how these documents translate into politics and economics,â€� says Ã�sgeirsdóttir. 

Anita Charles

The classroom should be a two-way street, says Anita Charles, senior lecturer and director of secondary teacher education at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, where every interaction between teacher and student is “transformational for both, and grounded in social and emotional well-being.â€�

A visitor to Charles’ ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ classroom would see the traffic flow both ways, a collaborative and creative space where “both students and instructor are engaging in critical inquiry, in building relationships, and in reflective practices,â€� she says.

Charles will use her Fulbright fellowship, her second in six years, to bring her teaching expertise to Fergusson University in Pune, a city in the western Indian state of Maharashtra affiliated with Savitribai Phule Pune University. She will teach courses related to special education, social-emotional development, literacy, and/or comparative education. 

Charles’ award is the Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Award, sponsored by the U.S. State Department’s United States–India Educational Foundation.

Charles arrived at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in 2004 with extensive teaching experience, from first grade to adult education, including 10 years as a high school English teacher. As director of secondary teacher education, she serves as the liaison between ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ Teacher Education program and various local and state stakeholders.

Charles’ interest in India has long been personal as well as professional. Three of her five children were adopted from India. “I have felt over the years that part of my heart lies in India, where I have had an opportunity to grow, learn, and give back to such a vibrant country.�

In the Fulbright spirit of cultural exchange, Charles hopes to come away from her time in India with insights that will allow her to improve the education courses she teaches at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, whose topics include special education and adolescent literacy. “This experience will also lend global awareness to issues, policies, and practices in teacher education, and cross-cultural depth to my understanding of inclusive practices.â€�

Amy Bradfield Douglass

A professor of psychology at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, Douglass is an expert in psychology and the law, specifically the unreliability of eyewitness testimony in criminal cases.

During her Fulbright time in Japan, Douglass will team with Japanese researchers to test if and how eyewitnesses from different cultures — the U.S. and Japan, in this case — remember scenes differently. “To date, most psychology and law research has focused on American eyewitnesses, ignoring the implications of cultural background for eyewitness identification memory tasks,� she says.

Specifically, Douglass will focus on a specific part of eyewitness testimony: the degree of confidence an eyewitness brings to their testimony. “Eyewitnesses can be confident, even when they have identified an innocent person,� Douglass notes. “Confidence is compelling incriminating evidence: People naturally assume that high confidence is associated with accuracy.�

Unfortunately, eyewitness confidence is “highly malleable,� Douglass explains. An eyewitness who gets a pat on the back — such as, “good, you identified the suspect!� — will end up believing that they were “more confident at the time they made the identification than they actually were.�

Funded by the National Science Foundation, Douglass has been looking at ways to prevent feedback effects. One way is by having an eyewitness watch a video replay of their identification of a suspect. Watching such a video “should allow [an eyewitness] to see evidence of how confident they were (or were not), thereby cementing their confidence report.� In a sense, watching the video would “inoculate� an eyewitness against feedback.

In Japan, Douglass and her host, Yukio Itsukushima, a professor at the University of Human Environments in the city of Okazaki, will test this hypothesis in a Japanese cultural context. The partnership “is an exciting opportunity,� she says, noting recent research showing that Japanese and Westerners tend to evaluate visual evidence differently.

“If showing witnesses a video of their own identification procedure inoculates American participants from feedback effects — but not Japanese participants — the proposed research will have provided useful information regarding how eyewitness memory functions across cultures.�

The recent recipient of a Fulbright Scholar award, Professor of Politics James Richter will spend fall 2019 in the Czech Republic, teaching at Masaryk University in Brno, giving public talks and making inroads on a new research project on the politics of memory.

The Fulbright Scholar Program offers hundreds of teaching and research awards annually in more than 125 countries. The U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program, Fulbright also sponsors the U.S. Student Program, whose awards typically are earned by some 20 ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ seniors and young alumni each year.

A widely published scholar of Eastern European politics, including recent studies of the organization of civil society in Russia, Richter is thinking of bringing the Czech Republic (formerly one component of Czechoslovakia) to the forefront of his next big research project.

Professor of Politics James Richter in his office (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

He enjoys learning about Czech language, music, and history; he wrote his master’s thesis in part on the 1968 Prague Spring, a period of liberal reforms in communist Czechoslovakia that were later violently suppressed.

During his Fulbright-funded visit, which is part of his yearlong sabbatical, Richter will teach courses in international relations and foreign policy in an English-language program geared to study-abroad students from around Europe.

He hopes to use some of his time in the Czech Republic to start an inquiry into how historical events and memories factor into Czech public life. (In the U.S., the politics of memory have played a big role in the debate over Confederate statues and symbols.)

“It’s about how politicians and states try to construct a symbolic environment which will support their regime in some way, or support a national identity,� he says. “That often takes resources. It takes money to build a statue.�

“It will be a great chance to talk to people and see what they’re concerned about, what’s important to them, and to use that as a place to go from.�

Richter wants to look at how the politics of memory have played out in the Czech Republic and Germany, where World War II is “a huge aspect of cultural introspection� and the use of Nazi symbols is strictly limited. He’s also interested in Poland and Hungary, where public memory of World War II and the communist regime is “extremely fraught,� he says.

Teaching will be especially interesting, Richter says, because his students won’t have lived through world war and communist rule and will have a different sense of the impact of those events on their lives.

“I’ll be dealing with students who were born 10 years after the communist regime ended, so for them, the communist regime is stories their parents and their relatives tell them,� he says.

Richter says he is excited to meet his students, learn about the differences between Czech and American university education, and get a sense of direction for further research.

The Fulbright experience will be “a great chance to talk to people and see what they’re concerned about, what’s important to them, and to use that as a place to go from,� he says. “I’m going to teach, I’m going to learn the language, hopefully much better, and prepare for the next project.�

Lecturer in Education Anita Charles. (Sarah Crosby/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Having both a longstanding interest in India and a winter 2016 sabbatical on the horizon, Anita Charles was thinking hard about a way to mesh the interest with the opportunity.

A lecturer on the education faculty and the director of secondary teacher education at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, Charles wanted to learn more about two aspects of childhood education in India. First, policies and practices pertaining to children with special needs; second, the role of digital technology, particularly how it aligns with literacy education.

​She’ll get that chance next year after receiving a
Fulbright–Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Award, ​which will ​allow her to work in India from January to April 2016.​

Here’s how the award came about. As Charles was pondering her sabbatical options, she met a professor of education from India who was working at Maine’s Thomas College as a Fulbright Scholar. Deepika Papneja, an assistant professor of education at Lady Shri Ram College for Women in New Delhi, was a scholar in residence at Thomas from 2013 to 2014.

“It was as if the stars aligned,” Charles says. “We talked about her experience, what she was doing, and where she was from.” Soon thereafter, when Charles learned of a Fulbright scholarship opportunity from ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ external grants office (aka the Office of Sponsored Programs and Research Compliance), Papneja agreed to arrange a letter of invitation from Lady Shri Ram in support of Charles’ Fulbright application.

“The process happened very quickly, from meeting Deepika, to learning about the Fulbright options, to applying,” Charles says. The application was approved and she received a Fulbright–Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Award. (Read more about Fulbright grants awarded to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ people in 2015).

Charles will teach courses in education, child development, and language acquisition at Lady Shri Ram, a unit of the University of Delhi. This first-hand experience with Indian approaches to elementary education, she hopes, will add a cross-cultural dimension to her understanding of literacy and special education.

“They’re interested in possible curriculum development that I might be able to lend my expertise toward,” Charles notes. “And they’ve mentioned my participating in interdisciplinary forums, seminars, and local outreach programs.”

When Charles came to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in 2004, she brought classroom teaching experience ranging from first grade to adult education, and including 10 years of teaching high school English. In India, she says, “I’m eager to do observations and get some sense of how India approaches public education. And I’ll be working with students who are going into teaching field, so I’m looking at what they’re doing.

‘It’s going to be really exciting to just embed myself in India’s culture and learn about their educational structures.’

“I go in with no preconceived ideas, other than the fact that I believe that they commit, in many ways, to some things that we do in this country — in terms of wanting to incorporate technology and wanting to have policies that benefit special-needs kids.”

But Charles’ interest in India is personal as well as professional. She and her husband, Chris Gelder, adopted three of their five children from India, and two of the three —daughters Devki Gelder, 16, and Malvika Gelder, 14 — will accompany Charles on her sabbatical in the land of their birth.

“I hope that it brings them a new understanding of their own cultural heritage,” she says.

Charles is especially excited about working at a women’s college in India, a nation with attitudes about gender that are quite different from those in the U.S. “I would like to believe that Lady Shri Ram is an environment of empowerment for women — for their voices, for their presence, for their education, for their futures.”

Charles says, “I expect a lot of the experience to be a challenge, in a very good sense of the word. I think it will push me beyond my comfort zone, and give me a new lens through which to look at Indian education as well as to look at our own education systems in this country.

“It’s going to be really exciting to just embed myself in the culture and learn about their educational structures.”

Charles has a bachelor’s degree in French and education from Dartmouth College, and a master’s in education in human development and psychology, with a focus on language and culture, from Harvard. She earned a doctorate from the University of New Hampshire in the area of adolescent literacy.

The film’s location makes it exotic, says Abikeyeva, “but at the same time it will be the journey of your own childhood. That is why the film will be very close to your own heart.”

The production is the first post-Soviet feature film produced in Kyrgyzstan, one of the smallest nations in Central Asia, and bordered by China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The size of Minnesota and dominated by towering mountains, some as tall as 24,000 feet, the country has a population of 4.5 million people, most of whom are Sunni Muslims.

The author of two books, The New Kazakh Cinema (1998) and Central Asian Cinema: 1990-2001 (2001), Abikeyeva has published more than 100 newspaper and magazine articles about film. She received a doctorate from the All-Union Institute of Cinema in Moscow where she wrote a dissertation on The Interaction of Cultures of the East and the West in Modern Cinema Process.

Abikeyeva has directed arts and culture programs in Kazakhstan for since 1997. Between 1992 and 1994, she was editor-in-chief of the critically acclaimed film magazine Asia-kino. Since 1995, she has taught film at the Kazakh Academy of Arts.

During her Fulbright visit, Abikeyeva is based at Bowdoin College. The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ event is co-sponsored by the German, Russian and East Asian languages departments and the Office of the Dean of Faculty.

Eilhardt is thrilled at the opportunity though less thrilled that his time at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ running short. “I’m annoyed, actually, that I have to graduate,” Eilhardt said. “I love learning about new things that I haven’t been exposed to yet, and I really think that’s what happened for me at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.”

Like many ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ alumni, his graduation won’t mark the end of his connections with ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½; his sister, Britt, has been accepted to the next year’s incoming class of 2005, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ sesquicentennial class.

A native of East Brunswick, N.J., Eilhardt often visited Maine as a child with his family. He chose ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ over other regional schools, he says, because he liked the people and felt it was a place he could be himself. Eilhardt spent his junior year at Oxford in ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ junior-year abroad program.

Eilhardt thought he’d study German and political science before he came to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, but it took a while before he settled on his major. He’s been impressed with the level of passion his professors have had for their work, particularly with Margaret Imber, assistant professor of classical and medieval studies, and his senior honors thesis adviser, Michael Jones, professor of history. Eilhardt’s just completed thesis was a never-before translated Latin text written by an eighth-century monk called the Venerable Bede, a theologian, philosopher, historian and scientist who lived in northern England.

Eilhardt’s Fulbright path will follow ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Assistant Professor of Biology Will Ambrose Jr. to the University of Oslo. Ambrose, working on a Fulbright Faculty Scholarship, has spent the last year in Norway studying Arctic sea-floor ecology.

Ambrose is now completing research on the relationships between processes occurring on the seafloor and in the overlying water and how they might contribute to global warming.

Last year, Ambrose accompanied two students on a month-long senior-thesis research project aboard the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Polar Sea to the ice-covered Chukchi Sea, northeast of Alaska. Ambrose, the students and two other researchers studied the diversity of single-cell ice algae, the distribution of ice algae in ice-core samples and whether sea floor-based organisms consume ice algae.

In The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World, just published by Princeton University Press, Danforth examines the Macedonian conflict in light of contemporary theoretical work on ethnic nationalism, the construction of national identities and cultures, the invention of tradition and the role of the state in building a nation.

The conflict is set in the broader context of Balkan history and the more narrow context of the recent disintegration of Yugoslavia. The book concludes with an analysis of the construction of identity on an individual level among immigrants from northern Greece who have settled in Australia, where multiculturalism is an official policy.

Harvard anthropologist Michael Herzfeld calls the book “the clearest exposition yet of the extraordinary complexities that have led observers to equate Macedonia with ‘confusion’… it is the most dispassionate available commentary on what has become a highly politicized situation. The use of data from Australia is a stroke of genius.”

A cultural anthropologist, Danforth is also the author of The Death Rituals of Rural Greece and Firewalking and Religious Healing: The Anastenaria of Greece and the American Firewalking Movement, both published by Princeton University Press.

Danforth joined the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ faculty in 1985. He has received number of prestigious grants and fellowships including a Fulbright Fellowship to conduct research at the University of Melbourne in Australia. Danforth graduated from Amherst College and received master’s and doctoral degrees from Princeton University.