Debbie Jean Brown, a PhD Candidate in the DPLS program, was recently awarded a Fulbright U.S. Student Full Research/Study Grant to Zambia for the 2014-15 school year.
The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government. It is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries.
The Fulbright Program provides participants–chosen for their academic merit and leadership potential–with the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research, exchange ideas and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns.
Fulbright Scholars can be found in over 155 countries around the world. The Full Research/Study Grant program for American graduate students receives about 5,000 applications per year and awards approximately 830 grants. The grant includes round-trip airfare to the host country, books and other study supplies, a living stipend, and health insurance for the duration of the grant period, usually one school year (nine months).
Debbie hopes to begin her grant period in October 2014, pending visas and research clearance. The grant period would then be Oct 2014- Jun 2015. Debbie’s project is to document and archive the cultural history of the Chewa people in Zambia from about colonialism to the present. She will spend the first half of her grant period in the capital city of Lusaka at the University of Zambia (UNZA). She will work under the supervision of an UNZA professor doing primary document research in the UNZA African library. The second half of her stay will be spent in a Chewa village close to the border with Malawi. Here Debbie will do ethnographic research, especially documenting oral histories. Before returning home, she will wrap up the project at UNZA, although she hopes the archival website will go on indefinitely to preserve a rich, vibrant, and diverse cultural history.