Six graduate students and one undergraduate student in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences recently received the Sturgis International Fellowship to pursue education and research opportunities abroad.

The recipients will travel abroad to work on a variety of projects, including a new artistic venture, several archival research projects and a space science internship. Their destinations include countries in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. 

Now in its 11th year, the Sturgis International Fellowship program was made possible by funding from the Roy and Christine Charitable Trust, which has a long history of generous support of U of A students.

Since 1985, the trust has supported outstanding undergraduate students through its highly competitive Sturgis Fellowships for incoming freshmen. More recently, the trust has awarded over $2.2 million in international education support through the Sturgis Grant program, which provides smaller awards for honors undergraduates participating in study abroad programs, and through the Sturgis International Fellowship, which supports continuous, long-term study abroad programs or international research trips with a monetary award of up to $15,500.

"The Sturgis International Fellowship is a rare funding opportunity in higher education," said J. Laurence Hare, executive director of Fulbright College's Office of Undergraduate Excellence and Global Engagement, which oversees the selection process for Sturgis International Fellows.

"The fellowship provides generous support for both honors undergraduates and graduate students to make long-term study abroad programs possible. It is thus a wonderful means of advancing the mission of our land-grant public research university and bringing top students into the vital process of research and higher learning," he added.

Preparations are already underway for the next two rounds of Sturgis International Fellowship applications, which will be due on Oct. 1, 2024, and Feb. 1, 2025. Applicants who are either honors undergraduate scholars or graduate students in Fulbright College and who wish to participate in overseas research, internships or study abroad programs lasting from three months to one year in 2025 are invited to apply.

Interested students may visit the Office of Undergraduate Excellence and Global Engagement table at the Study Abroad Fair from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 19, or to visit the office in Old Main 525. 

The 2024 Sturgis International Fellows

Alshaatha Al Sharj is an M.A. student in communication working on a project directed by Mohja Kahf on the regional perceptions of Omani peoples. Al Sharj is concerned with Omanis' close connections to and long history with both East Africa and the Arab-speaking Middle East. Using the funds from the Sturgis Fellowship, Al Sharj traveled to Muscat, Oman, to study strategies of representation in regional cultural museums, schools and university libraries and to conduct field interviews.

Nathan Harkey is a doctoral student in history studying early modern Spanish history and the history of Protestant and Catholic Reformations under the direction of Freddy Dominguez. With support from the Sturgis International Fellowship, Harkey traveled to archives in Toledo, Spain, and in the British Library in the U.K. to investigate the Church's role in Spanish politics in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. In his dissertation, Harkey challenges traditional narratives that frame the rise of the Spanish monarchy as part of a "march toward secularization and the separation of church and state."

August Lantz is pursuing an M.F.A. in art working with professor Jeannie Hulen. They were invited to be an artist in residence at the Tainan National University of the Arts in Tainan, Taiwan. The Sturgis Fellowship supported Lantz's stay in Tainan and supported trips within Taiwan and to Vietnam to study historical ceramics techniques. Such experiences are important for Lantz's work as an artist, which emphasizes "sculptural porcelain forms that grapple with forging and (de)construction of Asian-American identities through processes of translation and ornamentation."

Elise Merchak is a doctoral student in space and planetary sciences studying the atmosphere of Venus and its interactions with conditions on the planet's surface. Her mentor is Vincent Chevrier. The Sturgis International Fellowship allowed Merchak to accept an unpaid internship in Berlin, Germany, at the German Aerospace Center. She was also able to conduct research at the center's Planetary Spectroscopy Laboratory, which is at the forefront in research into planetary sciences.

Larkin Perler is an honors undergraduate student with a double major in anthropology and studio art and a minor in biology. She has a strong interest in the arts and cultures of Southeast Asia, and the Sturgis International Fellowship allowed her to take part in a full-time study abroad program with USAC in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Katlyn Rozovics is a doctoral student in history studying modern German history under the direction of J. Laurence Hare. Rozovics is currently studying the Nazi theft of Jewish-owned artworks in Europe and the ways in which the process of restitution has shaped the development of democracy in the Federal Republic of Germany in the postwar era. The Sturgis Fellowship allowed Rozovics to travel to archives in Berlin, Koblenz, where she examined files from the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce and the German Federal Office for External Restitution. She also traveled to Munich to conduct research in the libraries of the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte.

Liz Villamizar Caceres is a doctoral student working with Luis Restrepo in comparative literature. Her research assesses the history and reception of Teatro Indiano, a 16th-century theater genre that painted the Spanish conquest of the Americas in a heroic light and that thereby supported the extension of colonial rule. Support from the fellowship allowed Villamizar Caceres to conduct research with original manuscripts at the National Library of Spain in Madrid and to attend a conference in Valladolid on the influence of visual arts in Hispanic literature.