News

4 Ph.D. Students Receive Fulbright Scholarships for 2022-2023

Four Ph.D. students were among the 23 Duke recipients of Fulbright scholarships for the 2022-2023 academic year.

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program is the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program, offering opportunities in over 140 countries. The Fulbright award is designed to facilitate cultural exchange and increase mutual understanding between people of the United States and those of other countries.

The Duke campus deadline for the Fulbright U.S Student Program for the 2023-2024 academic year is August 22, 2022. Those considering applying should contact an adviser with Nationally Competitive Scholarships. For more information about the Fulbright U.S. Student Program, visit https://us.fulbrightonline.org.

Here is a look at the Ph.D. students who received the Fulbright for 2022-2023 and their projects:

Tayzhaun Glover, History

France, Fulbright Study/Research Grant—Freedom on the Horizon: Slave Flight and the French Abolition of Slavery, 1824-1848

Glover's project explores transmarine slave flight and its relationship to processes of abolition and emancipation in the Windward Islands of the Eastern Caribbean during the 1820s and 1830s, with a focus on the French colonies of Martinique and Guadeloupe. His research will contribute to a growing body of literature on fugitivity and enslaved peoples’ pursuit of refuge and freedom in the Americas.

Rachael Lau, Civil and Environmental Engineering

Nepal, Fulbright Study/Research Grant—Mitigating Disaster: Technology for Geophysical Risk and Resiliency in Nepal

Lau will conduct research in partnership with the National Society for Earthquake Technology-Nepal and the Institute of Engineering, Pulchowk, as part of a project to understand and model geohazard risk in Nepal and the greater Himalaya. More specifically, she will be working on the use of remote sensing methods to monitor geohazards.

Anna Truong, Chemistry

Australia, Fulbright Study/Research Grant—Uncovering Mechanisms of Drug Resistance in the Malaria Parasite

Truong is a third-year Ph.D. candidate in the Derbyshire lab, where she integrates chemical tools and biological approaches to study the parasite that causes malaria. During her Fulbright period, she will be pursuing a collaboration with Stuart Ralph at the University of Melbourne in Australia to elucidate mechanisms of parasite resistance to artemisinin-based combination therapy, the current frontline antimalarial drug treatment. She aims to expand her research interests in characterizing ubiquitin enzyme pathways, which mediate an essential protein modification in the malaria parasite, to the context of drug resistance. This work will ultimately inform malaria treatments by providing fundamental insight into parasite survival and identifying novel drug targets.

Stephen Zaksewicz, German Studies

Austria, Fulbright Study/Research Grant—The Ends of the World: Planetarity in Contemporary Austrian Prose

Zaksewicz's dissertation explores how Austrian writers imagine the world amidst contemporary globalization and how natural imagery, which has long played an important role in Austrian cultural imagination and identity, both shapes and is shaped by experiences and perceptions of the world. These writers’ imaginations of the world as a planet expand the possibilities for responding to the ecological crises of the Anthropocene.