Fulbright Forward - A Diversity Podcast

In this episode of Fulbright Forward, Kelli Swazey, D&I Liaison for Fulbright Programs in East Asia and the Pacific, talks story with grantees who are shaping the future of Fulbright by pushing the program to expand its engagement with issues of representation, inclusion, equity and justice as a core part of the Fulbright experience.

The guests on this episode are members of the Taiwan DEI Committees, a self-organized ...

This episode features Fulbright Alumna Evi Mariani. Evi was a 2011 Hubert Humphrey Fellow from Indonesia at Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. Her critical work has been widely recognized, and she is the recipient of several prestigious journalism awards including a Society of Publishers in Asia award for excellence in public journalism, the Tasrif Award, the Indonesia Print Media Awards Golden Awa...

On today’s podcast we feature esteemed Jewish Uruguayan Anthropologist, teacher, fiction author, and Fulbright alumna, Dr. Teresa Porzecanski. During today’s episode, Dr. Porzecanski and Fulbright WHA D&I Liaison, Jeremy Gombin-Sperling talk about her history of anthropological work in Uruguay on the Uruguayan Jewish population. In tracing this genealogy, we learn about Dr. Porzecanski’s efforts to preserve and conserve the sto...

In this episode of Fulbright Forward, we talk to Tamara Shogaolu, a Fulbright alumna whose work in filmmaking and immersive media disrupts the norm of uni-directional single narrative storytelling. Tamara’s many award-winning media projects integrate animation, VR, AR, and other immersive technologies in telling stories that are rarely given the space to be heard in today’s contemporary mediascapes. Her multi-part series Queer in A...

 On this episode of Fulbright Forward, we are shifting geographic location to Ghana in West Africa, and focusing on the work of current U.S. Fulbright Scholar to Ghana, Professor Candace Moore. Professor Moore is the Associate Clinical Professor in the Higher Education, Student Affairs, International Education Policy (HESI) program within the Department of Counseling, Higher Education, and Special Education at the University of Mar...

In this episode of Fulbright Forward, Jeremy Gombin-Sperling, the Fulbright Diversity and Inclusion Liaison for Western Hemisphere Programs continues the conversation on English and language teaching in the Western Hemisphere with Bilingual Educator and alumna of the Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Program in Ecuador, Meilin Chong. During the episode, Meilin shares how her experiences as a biracial Latina woman  of Peruvian an...

In this episode, Lithuanian author, historian and activist Dalia Leinarte and Susanne Hamscha, EUR Diversity Coordinator, talk about feminism and women's rights in the Soviet Union and the Post-Soviet space. Dalia experienced the former Soviet Union as an insider and and met the restoration of the Independence of Lithuania as a young woman. Dalia interviewed a large number of women and wrote the oral history book, Adopting and...

In this episode of Fulbright Forward, Fulbright Americas Diversity and Inclusion Liaison speaks with U.S. ETA alum to Guatemala, Jonathan Peraza Campos about the critical need to redefine and reimagine how folks from the United States conduct English teaching abroad, in particular within Latin America and the Caribbean. As Jonathan shares in the episode, this is about disrupting “perceptions that the United States is a white, wealt...

In this episode, Sandra Eder (Berkeley University), Daniela Jauk (University of Akron), Simone Poetscher (OSTA), and Susanne Hamscha (Regional Diversity Coordinator EUR) talk about gender equality and higher education in the US and Austria. Sandra and Daniela share how gender, class, and age factored into their career decisions, while Simone speaks from her rich experience of working with researchers and scientists. Sandra Eder and...

CW // This podcast contains discussion of violence, gun violence

The Black Lives Matter movement, while initiated in response to the state of racial relations in the United States, has reverberated in societies around the world. With the growing awareness of the global relevance of the movement, the call to address the historical roots and realities of  contemporary violence and discrimination has also been taken up aroun...

Hera Jay Brown, a Fulbright-Schuman alum, and Susanne Hamscha, EUR Regional Diversity Coordinator, discuss the European Union's position on migration in this episode. What is the human cost of "fortress Europe," as the EU's response to migration is sometimes referred to? Why does it matter how we talk about migration and people who migrate? And which role does compassion play in this context, particularly during...

In this episode of Fulbright Forward, Fulbright alumna of the U.S. Student Program to Jamaica, Abigail Ramsay, helps us explore the power of theater and storytelling in ways that go beyond entertainment. Through a rich sharing of her experiences in Jamaica and beyond, Abigail shares how theater and storytelling can be and perhaps should be seen more as mediums for critical community building that help individuals, especially those ...

Fulbright Bulgaria alum Chris Curran and Susanne Hamscha, EUR Regional Diversity Coordinator, talk about the discrimination of Roma communities in Europe and in Bulgaria, in particular. Chris shares about his work with the Trust for Social Achievement, which seeks to improve access to housing and education for Roma people in Bulgaria. Chris also talks about how his job as an immigrants rights lawyer has helped him contextualize his...

Similarly to many countries in the Western Hemisphere, the history of feminism in Brazil has been about moving towards a politic that centers and acknowledges how systems of oppression such as racism and classism impact and intersect with the violent sexism that encompasses the struggle of feminist action and thought, and towards a politic that captures the lived experience of cis and trans women of color at the margins of  Brazili...

Ronda Železný-Green, a digital learning and technology policy expert, and EUR Diversity Coordinator Susanne Hamscha talk about the intersection of race and gender in (higher) education, technology as a tool for achieving  equality, and the underrepresentation of women of color in higher education in the UK. Ronda acts as a consultant to the US-UK Fulbright Commission and from 2013-14, she held a US Fulbright Student Grant to conduc...

“Ni una menos, ni una muerte más.” Not one woman less, not one more death. This phrase has functioned as one of the slogans both through social media and political discourse in the movement to fight gender-based violence, and to protect the lives of trans and cisgender women across Latin America. From its start in Argentina in 2015, ni una menos capture the ongoing struggle for gender equity and to change the gendered structures of...

Barriers to education still remain across the Asia-Pacific region for individuals from underrepresented backgrounds, and those from minority and marginalized communities. In this episode, we speak with Anggiasari Puji Aryati, a politician and activist working for gender equality and disability rights, and Ajeng Herliyanti, a mental health provider, yoga teacher, and gender activist.  Ajeng and Anggi share their personal experiences...