Four West Virginia University faculty members, all in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, have received grants from the U.S. Fulbright Scholar Program to conduct research abroad.
The recipients are:
- Nicholas Bowman, Associate Professor of Communication Studies
- Jay Krehbiel , Assistant Professor of Political Science
- Tamba M’Bayo, Associate Professor of History
- Ángel Tuninetti, Professor of Spanish
“The Eberly College is proud to have so many faculty selected for Fulbright awards this year,” said Gregory Dunaway, dean of the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences. “The number of awardees speaks to both the quality and breadth of our faculty’s scholarship and expertise. We are delighted that these individuals will be afforded an amazing opportunity to grow and advance their knowledge through this highly prestigious international program.
Nicholas Bowman will spend six months in Taiwan conducting research at the National Chengchi University’s Media Psychology Laboratory. The Fulbright award will support his position as the lab’s scholar-in-residence, where he will study augmented and virtual reality technologies. He will also teach two courses on media psychology and communication technology and lead workshops on research design and analysis.
“My teaching and research interests are strongly aligned with interactive entertainment technologies, of which Taiwan is a global leader in innovation and adoption,” Bowman said. “However, a major criticism of this research broadly is that most of the current published research is based on participants from Western nations, such as the U.S. and Germany. I will address this criticism directly by conducting high-quality research in Taiwan, an area that receives comparatively little scholarly attention despite being among the world leaders in technological innovation.”
Jay Krehbiel will travel to Norway in August 2019 and spend five months studying Europe’s justice system at the University of Oslo’s PluriCourts Centre. Using the European Union’s Court of Justice, one of the world’s oldest, busiest and most powerful international courts as a lens, he will examine the influence of domestic political and economic conditions on the decision-making and efficacy of international courts.
“Conducting my research at PluriCourts will be crucial to the success of this project because it facilitates access to the unique expertise of the PluriCourts faculty and the center’s ongoing work at the forefront of scholarly research on international courts,” Krehbiel said.
Tamba M’bayo will spend the 2019-2020 academic year at the University of Sierra Leone teaching two African history courses and writing the manuscript for his forthcoming book, “From ‘White man’s Grave’ to Ebola: Sierra Leone’s History of Epidemics, 1787-2015.” The book project builds on his research using interviews with Ebola survivors in Sierra Leone in summer 2016. M’bayo also received an NEH fellowship and a Woodrow Wilson Center Residential Fellowship for the same project.
“As my study focuses on Sierra Leone, spending time there while writing my book will allow me to access local sources and cross-check information more easily than would be possible if I were in the U.S,” M’bayo said. “The Sierra Leone National Archives, for example, will be within easy reach.”
Ángel Tuninetti will spend six months in Paraguay studying challenges and opportunities for higher education internationalization in the country. Through his study, Tuninetti will develop a SWOT analysis to offer recommended strategies to maximize their global impact. He will also teach courses and seminars on global competencies and internationalization tools for students, faculty, staff and administrators at Universidad Nacional de Asunción.
“The higher education system in Paraguay is progressing toward internationalization, but there is a lack of systemic approaches to the topic and a partial understanding of the full extent of what this means,” Tuninetti said. “I plan to diagnose the current state of internationalization in Paraguayan universities as well as the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for their plans of action.”
