The University of Georgia Office of Global Engagement has announced that James Martin, Magdalena Zurawski, Fausto Sarmiento and Walker DePuy have received Fulbright Scholar Program awards for the 2022-2023 academic year from the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.

Martin, Zurawski, Sarmiento and DePuy are among more than 800 U.S. citizens who will conduct research and/or teach abroad for the 2022-2023 academic year through the Fulbright Scholar Program. Additionally, more than 1,900 diverse U.S. students, artists and early career professionals in more than 100 different fields of study receive Fulbright U.S. Student Program grants annually to study, teach English and conduct research overseas.

Fulbrighters engage in cutting-edge research and expand their professional networks, often laying the groundwork for future institutional partnerships targeting the challenges facing their communities and the world. Upon returning to their home countries, institutions, labs and classrooms, they share their stories and become advocates of international exchange, inviting foreign scholars to campus and encouraging colleagues and students to go abroad. As Fulbright Scholar alumni, their careers are enriched by joining a network of thousands of esteemed scholars, many of whom are leaders in their fields. Fulbright alumni include 61 Nobel Prize laureates, 89 Pulitzer Prize recipients and 40 who have served as a head of state or government.

Sarmiento, professor of geography in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, received a Fulbright Global Scholar Award to help develop a global institute of mountain studies that examines and integrates Western, Eastern and Southern perspectives on mountains in conjunction with researchers from the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Innsbruck, the University of Tsukuba and the University of the United Nations in Japan and the Austral University in Chile. The research focus will include urban montology, sacred site conservation and the role of sentient mountainscapes in the environmental cognition of indigenous peoples. This project will involve a network of senior scientists in academies, universities, research laboratories and local NGOs that can develop curricular and field practices for global mountain studies.

Martin, associate professor of wildlife in the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, was awarded a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award for the 2022-2023 academic year cycle after deferring a 2021-2022 award. He then decided to accept the 2021-2022 award and is completing his Fulbright in Trondheim, Norway, with the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, using noninvasive mark recapture to estimate animal population density. He is also working on improving harvest management for ptarmigan species by working with scientists and managers to better integrate existing information into decisions.

Zurawski, associate professor of English and creative writing in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, will be working on a creative nonfiction book in Poland, hosted by the University of Łodz in the city of Łodz. She will conduct historical, archival and in situ research to explore the stories of life under Nazi and Soviet occupation that she absorbed from her Polish elders throughout her childhood in a New Jersey suburb. She also plans to examine the effects of these stories upon her own understanding of her family and Polish culture, to seek to better understand the larger historical context of a personal history. Additionally, she plans to explore intergenerational trauma and its relationship to storytelling, the limits of personal and historical memory and the memory of other people’s memories as a special mode of experience.

DePuy, a recent graduate of UGA’s Integrative Conservation (ICON) Ph.D. program, will study Indonesia’s plan to construct a new national capital on the island of Borneo. He will combine ethnographic and participatory methods to understand the new capital’s “forest city” vision, its impacts on the peoples and places around it, and how Indigenous knowledge about area soundscapes can further this work and help empower local communities. This research project is a collaborative endeavor with partners at Universitas Mulawarman in East Kalimantan, Indonesia, and Cornell University in New York and is anticipated to begin in fall 2022.

“We are extremely proud of our four Fulbright Scholar Award recipients,” said Martin Kagel, interim associate provost for global engagement, “whose projects in Asia, Europe and South America underscore the global reach of the University of Georgia’s research endeavors. Their success in securing support from the United States’ flagship program of academic exchange is a testament to the quality of their scholarship and its relevance in a global context.”

The Fulbright Program is currently accepting applications for the 2023-2024 academic year, with a deadline of Sept. 15 at 11:59 p.m. PST.

The Fulbright Program is the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program and is supported by the people of the United States and partner countries around the world. The Fulbright Program is funded through an annual appropriation made by the U.S. Congress to the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Participating governments and host institutions, corporations and foundations around the world also provide direct and indirect support to the program.

For over 75 years, the Fulbright Program has provided more than 400,000 participants—chosen for their academic merit and leadership potential—with the opportunity to exchange ideas and contribute to finding solutions to challenges facing their communities and the world. In the United States, the Institute of International Education supports the implementation of the Fulbright U.S. Student and Scholar Programs on behalf of the U.S. Department of State, including conducting an annual competition for the scholarships.