Fulbright Forward - A Diversity Podcast

“Every place has a queer history.” Those are some of the impactful words shared by our guest today, Fulbright 2022-2023 U.S. Student Researcher to Chile, Sam Apostolopoulos. Sam’s Fulbright project focuses on understanding the legal history of LGBTQ+ rights in Chile and comparing that with the history of LGBTQ+ legal frameworks in the United States. Through this conversation, Sam shares a great deal of insights about how LGBTQ+ legal rights evolved in Chile, the discourse used to protect and advocate for these rights, the challenges that the queer community faced during eras such as the Pinochet dictatorship, and where things stand now in the country. Sam also touches a bit on this legal history in the U.S. including a court case involving a nonbinary person that occurred 400 years ago! In this way, his message is clear. There is queer history everywhere, and we can all play a part in remembering, reviving, and sustaining it!Another important aspect of this conversation is the way that Sam’s project also works to interrupt existing narratives of the United States’s relationship to LGBTQ+ rights. The U.S. has often attempted to portray itself as a beacon of queer and trans rights that other countries should follow, despite the U.S.’s own record of lack of protections and attacks on its own LGBTQ+ community, and the fact that nations it tries to advise sometimes have stronger systems. In the case of Sam, he shows that Chile often has legalized protections for queer and trans people before the United States, and to this day offers greater federal legal support for the LGBTQ+ community. Furthermore, Sam also articulates how the embrace of LGBTQ+ protections in Chile as human rights and the U.S.’s resistance towards that framework have helped exacerbate some of these differences. So the question remains: what is it that the United States can learn from other countries such as Chile? We hope you enjoy this episode!

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 group of English Teaching Assistants, or “ETAs” at the Taiwan Fulbright Program. In the first half of this episode, Lily Tang & Samantha Tran from the Empowerment Committee, and Jaime Ragos from the Education Committee discuss what drew to them to the Fulbright program, and how their personal stories connect to the issues they have engaged with through their work with the DEI Committees during their Fulbright grants in Taiwan. The second half of the episode features Carlo Juntilla and Ayana Harscoet from the Empowerment Committee, and Jocelyn Chi from the Education Committee, who share their paths to Fulbright, and their reflections on why the activism and advocacy work they've undertaken with the DEI committees has been essential not only to their experiences as educators, but also has allowed them to reflect on their own identities and expand the relationships they made in their communities and cohorts during their grant periods. Episode Links and ResourcesTaiwan DEI Committees LinktreeTaiwan DEI Committees Instagram Guest Bios Lily Tang (she/her) is a 2021-2022 Fulbright Taiwan English Teaching Assistant in Yilan County, which is on the traditional land of the Taiya people.  Currently, Lily is embarking on a year of Chinese language study through the Huayu Enrichment Scholarship. Lily can be reached on Instagram or TikTok @lilytvng.Samantha Tran (she/her) Samantha Tran (she/her) is a first-generation Vietnamese-American. She completed her 2021-2022 Fulbright Taiwan ETA grant year in Taitung, Taiwan, and is currently fulfilling her Foundation of Scholarly Exchange ETF grant in New Taipei City. Jaime Ragos (she/her) was a 2021-2022 ETA to Kaohsiung, Taiwan in the Dashu District. She was a co-chair of the education committee. Jaime can be reached at jaimeragos2015@gmail.com.Carlo Juntilla (he/him) is an education policy fellow for the U.S. Senate and a former teacher. Prior to teaching in public schools in Taiwan with the Fulbright program, he was a Teach for America corps member in the Bay Area where he taught high school history and government. Currently, Carlo works on the education policy portfolio for Senator Elizabeth Warren, and lives in Washington, D.C., with his partner and their rescue dog Carlo.Juntilla1@gmail.com.Jocelyn Chi (she/her) was a 2021-2022 Fulbright Taiwan ETA in Chiayi and the education co-chair. Currently, she is completing her second year in Chiayi under the English Teaching Flagship award. She can be reached at jocelync888@gmail.com.

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 Award for investigative journalism, and the Influential Media Figure award from MAW Talk Awards. She was also a reporter and later Managing Editor at the Jakarta Post, one of Indonesia’s most respected and long-running English-language daily newspapers. Evi and her colleagues founded Project Multatuli in 2021. Project Multatuli is a public service journalism initiative dedicated to carrying out the ideals of giving a voice to the voiceless, spotlighting the marginalized, and reporting on the underreported. The organization produces data-based, deeply researched news stories. They collaborate with other news organizations, research bodies, and civil society groups that strive for democracy, human rights, social justice, environmental sustainability, and equal rights for all.Evi shares with the story of how she came to create Project Multatuli and how the collective is using innovative approaches to produce journalism aligned with their mission to serve the underreported and hold power accountable. We discuss the Project’s strategies to disrupt dominant practices in Indonesia’s media industry, and the challenges of creating a work culture and societal structures that support truly inclusive media production. Related Links: Project Multatuli Alumni & Voices: Evi Mariani SofianIn CONVERSATION with Evi Mariani, Executive Director of Project Multatuli

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 stories of many Uruguayan Jews through her qualitative research, and the impact it had. This discussion also led us into reflecting on the nation-state as a concept, how nations build narratives to advance certain goals often at the cost of those most marginalized by it. Finally, we talk about Dr. Porzecanski’s career as a writer of novels and how her work as a Jewish academic and a writer have informed each other.What becomes clear in this conversation is that academic research can have a social consciousness. The stories we gather through research can do more than just preserve the diverse histories of communities and people; the sharing of stories are a mode to shift consciousness, to reevaluate much of what many of us thought to be true, to better realize the complexities of those around us and those who lived before us.Books referenced by Dr. Porzecanski:Historias de vida de inmigrantes judíos al UruguayHistorias de vida: negros en el Uruguay

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 Time of Forced Migration  was developed from interviews she conducted during her research on migration while she was a Fulbright scholar in Egypt, and she has continued to use immersive media installations to engage audiences to interact with underrepresented stories and narratives. Tamara's groundbreaking approach to storytelling  has led to sources like The Guardian and Vogue Magazine naming her a leader in the field of new and immersive media. She is a 2018 Sundance Institute New Frontier Lab Programs Fellow and a 2019 Gouden Kalf Nominee. She was a Burton Lewis Endowed Scholar for Directing at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, a Luce Scholar in Indonesia, and an Academy Nicholls Fellowship Semifinalist.In 2014, Tamara launched Ado Ato Pictures, a Los Angeles and Amsterdam-based film and XR studio, expanding her work that shares intersectional stories across mediums, platforms, and virtual and physical spaces in order to promote cross-cultural understanding and challenge preconceptions. Her most recent work,  Un(re)solved  is a multi-platform installation and investigation that examines a federal effort to grapple with America’s legacy of racist killings through the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act. In the interactive experience, the stories of those murdered are brought to life in part through impressionistic animations rooted in archival source materials. The project makes available to the public for the first time a comprehensive interactive list of all those whose cases were re-examined by the Department of Justice.  In this episode, Tamara discusses her methodology and approach in creating immersive media experiences. The concerns of identity, voice, and the representation of stories of historically underrepresented and marginalized communities are centered in the media she creates. Her projects confront audiences to consider the roles of responsibilities of their role in encountering these stories. She also reflects on her experience as a first-generation American in applying for the Fulbright program, and shares suggestions on how we can make our work as Fulbright participants as collaborative and accessible as possible, endeavoring to institutionalize ideals of justice, inclusion, and access in Fulbright programs around the world.

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 Maryland (UMD), College Park. During this episode, we discuss Professor Moore’s Fulbright project, “Culturally Conscious Pedagogy and Practice: Collaborating to Inform Ghanaian Higher Education COVID-19 Response.” During this discussion , recorded only days before she departed for Ghana, we explore numerous topics including Professor Moore’s background and pathway to the Fulbright,  an analysis of the field of student affairs, reimagining the function of international educational programming, understanding Blackness in a global context, and ultimately how she has conceptualized what decolonial practices mean for her work in Ghana.Below are a list of resources either referenced in or related to  the episode:Institute for Educational Planning and Administration at University of Cape CoastArticle on Professor Moore's FulbrightArticle on Professor Moore's Co-led Study Abroad Program to Ghana Decolonizing Educational Research by Leigh Patel: Center for Diversity and Inclusion in Higher Education at University of Maryland-College Park

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 and Chinese heritage have informed how she understands the world, and the changes she believes need to happen in order to create more inclusive and equitable spaces for folks of color, as well as multiracial and multilingual communities. Part of this discussion also revolves around a concept that Meilin introduces early on, the idea of "I refuse to choose." While this idea originally stems from a book by Barbara Shur of the same name on career development, our conversation takes the idea to more complex understandings. As Meilin will discuss, "refuse to choose" can also be about interrupting power such as in breaking assumptions abroad that the only people who can claim to be from the United States and/or teach English are white, or as she has done in her teaching, fostering spaces where young children of color from linguistic backgrounds others than English can celebrate and be celebrated for the many languages and cultures that make them who they are. See below for resources and references discussed in the podcast episode:Barbara Shur: Refuse to Choose Overview of Bilingual Education in the United States"Color Esperanza" by Diego TorresArticle exploring socioeconomic impacts of white families on bilingual immersion programs in U.S. Blog article on  intercultural bilingual education in Latin America (Spanish)

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 Remembering Soviet Reality: Life Stories of Lithuanian Women, 1945–1970 (Rodopi, 2010), which is referenced in this episode. Dalia is a current member of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). She held a Fulbright scholar grant in 2002-03.Please note: Dalia uses both "LGBTIQ" and "LBTIQ" in the podcast as the acronym LBTIQ is officially used in the context of CEDAW.

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, wealthy, and perfect English-speaking country by exposing [students] to the multiracial, multicultural, and multilingual diversity and history of the U.S.”  Through this discussion we reflect on how Jonathan navigated his ETA-ship, how he implemented a critical English-teaching praxis with his students, and what any of us can do to move us towards a more politically conscious English teaching world where the full humanity of our students and ourselves is celebrated, and exclusionary narratives are questioned and dismantled. Jonathan Peraza Campos, a U.S. Salvadoran/Guatemalan educator, organizer, abolitionist thinker, and Central American scholar whose work focuses on organizing around racial, immigrant, and educational justice, on providing a critical and multifaceted education to Latinx youth throughout the Atlanta metro area, and to building bridges built on solidarity and connection between communities in Central America and U.S. Central Americans. To learn more about Jonathan and the work in which he is involved, check out the links below:Activist in Residence with Abolitionist Teaching NetworkLead Teacher with Ser Familia Inc. Migration News Curator with Central American NewsOrganizer with the Buford Highway People’s HubLinks to work by scholars and activists mentioned in the episode:Race, Empire, and English Language Teaching  by Dr. Suhanthie MothaWebsite of Dr. Bettina LoveDiscussion on the four part equity framework designed by Dr. Gholdy Muhammad Website of Dr. Christopher Emdin

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 Daniela Jauk are both alums of Fulbright Austria; Simone collaborates with Fulbright in her capacity at OSTA and is also Connector in Chief at Thrycon.Useful Links and Resources mentioned in the Podcast:Elsevier Report Stride program, University of Michigan Gendered Innovations @ StanfordFaculty Activity/Workload dashboards Joya Misra on Inside Higher Ed Zippel, Kathrin. Women in Global Science: Advancing Academic Careers through International Collaboration. Stanford University Press, 2017.De Welde, Kris. 2017. "Moving the Needle on Equity and Inclusion." Humboldt Journal of Social Relations 1 (39): 192-211. Sociologists for Women in Society

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 around  Asia and the Pacific. This has started to facilitate difficult but necessary conversations about race and systemic forms of discrimination, and underscored the need for building solidarity between communities who have been marginalized on the basis of their identities in order to combat racism. This episode features Guled Mire, a Black Muslim activist and Fulbright Scholar from Aotearoa New Zealand. Guled is young leader and community advocate who is passionate about advancing and encouraging the social well-being and inclusion of New Zealand’s ethnic and former refugee communities. In our conversation, Guled shares his experiences of growing up Black in New Zealand and his role as an advocate for New Zealand’s Muslim community.  As an organizer of the Black Lives Matter movement in the Pacific, he reflects on the challenges and potentials of addressing racial issues in the context of the region, and how his identity has shaped not only his activism but also his experiences as a Fulbright Scholar studying in the US.You can follow Guled's work on his Twitter account. Further reading: Why I spoke up about racism after March 15th, and why others should too. Guled Mire, The Spinoff, August 31st 2020. Black Lives Matter.com: Herstory. George Floyd Death: Pacific Peoples in NZ Raise Their Voice After Black Lives Matter Protest, New Zealand Herald, June 4th 2020. Supporting Black Lives Matter In Asia. Nithin Coca, Medium.com: Asia Uncovered, August 18th, 2020.

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 this pandemic? These are some of the questions Hera tackles in this episode. Hera Jay Brown was a Fulbright-Schuman grantee to Belgium, Malta, and Lithuania in 2019-20 and a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University in 2020.

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 damaged by structural marginalization and oppression, heal their trauma, realize their power, and more readily reimagine a more just future. We also learn more about Abigail, and how her experience as a Black Jamaican American woman first born in London and raised in New York City, with original expectations to go into the sciences, found herself in Jamaica and all the things she learned from that time abroad. Check out links below to Abigail's project, Downtown Girls Theatre Collective! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/downtowngirlstheatre/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/downtowngirlstheatre/

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 experiences in Bulgaria, and he explains why he decided to leave his job and apply for a Fulbright grant. Chris was a Fulbright Research Fellow in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 2018-19. He serves as the Queer History and Education Coordinator for Fulbright Prism. For more information about the Council of Europe's stategy for Roma inclusion, visit https://www.coe.int/en/web/roma-and-travellers/homeTo learn more about "Gelem, Gelem," the "Roma anthem" Chris references in this episode, read Petra Gelbart's piece "The Romani Anthem as a Microcosm of Diversity."

Traveling social worker Sojourner White and Susanne Hamscha, EUR Regional Diversity Coordinator, talk about unpacking and navigating one's social identities abroad, reflecting on discrimination and privilege, and translating experience into action. Sojourner is the founder and creator of Sojournies, a travel education platform. She was a Fulbright ETA in Spain in 2016-17.

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  Brazilian society. How, though, has this struggle played out on an individual and interpersonal level for women in Brazil, especially those who identify with the feminist movement? In this episode of Fulbright Forward, Jeremy Gombin-Sperling, Fulbright Americas Diversity and Inclusion Liaison, speaks with Fulbright Brazil alumna, Dr. Sandra Azeredo. During the episode, Sandra shares about the importance of a critical feminist perspective, the past and current context of feminism in Brazil vis-a-vis the relationship between Black and white women, the role of academia, and as we will learn, how her own story as a multiracial Black woman has impacted her journey. Below is a list of resources referenced in the episode:  "For an Afro-Latin American Feminism" by Lélia Gonzalez: http://feministarchives.isiswomen.org/47-books/confronting-the-crisis-in-latin-america-women-organizing-for-change/828-for-an-afro-latin-american-feminism The Syllabus of Sandra's Course, "Gender and Race in Brazil": https://www.umass.edu/wgss/sites/default/files/assets/wgss/azeredo_-_wgss_694b_-_fall_2016.pdfMore on the Elections of Black Queer and Trans Candidates to City Councils in Brazil: https://www.them.us/story/marielle-francos-widow-monica-benicio-elected-city-council-rio-brazil More on the U.S. Black Writer, Nella Larsen: https://interactive.wttw.com/playlist/2020/07/17/nella-larsen

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 conduct research for her PhD in Kenya.

“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 power. In this episode of Fulbright Forward, Jeremy Gombin-Sperling, Fulbright Americas Diversity and Inclusion Liaison, speaks with Fulbright Argentina alumna, Dr. Guadalupe Maradei about recent feminist movements in Argentina and Latin America, and about how literature and literary criticism have contributed to the struggle for gender justice. Throughout the episode, Dr. Maradei references several events, artists, activists, and scholars involved in feminist movements. Please find a list of resources below:Mariela Gouiric and her poem “Ley 26.485”: https://vimeo.com/110463794“La Tesis” in Santiago, Chile: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB7r6hdo3W4Rita Laura Segato, “La escritura en el cuerpo de las mujeres asesinadas en Ciudad Juárez: territorio, soberanía, y crímenes de segundo estado: http://www.debatefeminista.pueg.unam.mx/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/articulos/037_05.pdf Feminist History of Literature Project in Argentina: https://www.eduvim.com.ar/blog/proyecto-historia-feminista-de-la-literatura-argentina Article on the Approved Abortion Law in Argentina: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/30/argentina-legalises-abortion-in-landmark-moment-for-womens-rights

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 in pursuing their educational goals as members of minority communities in Indonesia. We get their take on how educational exchange programs can be more inclusive in the context of the region.

In this episode, Czeslaw Walek, alumnus of the Czech Fulbright Commission, and EUR Diversity Coordinator Susanne Hamscha talk about LGBTQ equality, same-sex marriage in the Czech Republic, and  the LGBTQ rights movements in the US and in Europe. Czeslaw is the Chairman of Prague Pride and manager of Jsme Fér ("we are fair").