Raymond Blankenhorn is completing a PhD at New York University, where his research focuses on the intersection of theatre and political philosophy. His 2025–26 Fulbright project, A Delicate Task: Theatres of Diplomacy in Austria, examines the entangled histories of theatre and diplomacy in Vienna. Beyond academia, Raymond has worked extensively as a theatre director, collaborating with institutions including Target Margin Theater, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the Schaubühne, and the Wien Kultursommer. He holds a degree in classics from Oxford University.

Justine Rozenich is studying social housing policy and Vienna's current housing shortage through the Institute for Social Policy at the Vienna University of Economics and Business. She hopes to use the knowledge she gains to better understand and explore solutions to both the Austrian and US housing crises.

Lynn Gibbard is a professor in the Department of Communication at Appalachian State University who teaches intercultural communication, media and society/media studies, strategic communication, and more. Her professional work includes applied research in military veteran transition and grant projects that support transition to higher education and sustainable farming. She began her academic life as a high-school English teacher and then pursued her MA in applied linguistics/TEFL. Lynn taught at the American University of Armenia for three years in TEFL and TEFL teacher education. She shifted her focus to communication education and intercultural communication, earning her PhD at the University of Miami. In 2005, she developed the public-communication major at the University of Vermont and had the opportunity to work with extension agents and rural farmers. While there, she also developed an intercultural-communication study-abroad course to Belize. In 2009, Lynn began her tenure at Appalachian State University, a former rural teachers college. She continued to take students to Belize and to develop applied educational opportunities for students pursuing vocations across a wide range of communication and communication-related fields. To this day, intercultural communication and understanding are at the heart of her teaching and practice.

Clint Peinhardt is a professor of political science, public policy, and political economy at the University of Texas at Dallas, where he has been a faculty member since 2005. His academic credentials include an MA from the Institute of Social Studies (now part of Erasmus University Rotterdam), and a PhD in political science from the University of Michigan. Clint's research focuses on international relations, with a particular interest in investment treaties, political risk insurance, and the environmental impacts of trade agreements. He has co-authored an Oxford University Press book and has published numerous articles in journals such as International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, World Politics, Business & Politics, Global Environmental Politics, and the Journal of Conflict Resolution. Clint is available to speak on topics related to international organizations, international political economy, international trade, investor-state dispute settlement, and American foreign economic policy.

Krupa Ramasesha is a principal investigator at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, California, where she is leading a research program investigating ultrafast dynamics in the gas and condensed phases as well as at interfaces. Research in her group explores photoinduced energy transfer and excited-state dynamics governing bond dissociation, conformational changes, and charge transfer on femtosecond to picosecond time scales. Their work spans the fields of gas-phase photophysics and photochemistry, charge- and energy-transfer dynamics across plasmonic metal-molecule interfaces, and electronic and vibrational dynamics in molecular materials such as energetic materials and organic semiconductors. Her group brings to bear multiple experimental tools, including table-top ultrafast soft X-ray spectroscopy, ultrafast electron diffraction, and ultrafast broadband infrared and UV/visible transient absorption spectroscopies.

Krupa received a BS in chemistry from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She performed her postdoctoral work at the University of California, Berkeley, and at Sandia National Laboratories. Krupa's recent honors include the US Department of Energy Early Career Award and the American Chemical Society Physical Chemistry Division Lectureship. She serves on the editorial advisory boards of the Journal of Chemical Physics and the Journal of Physical Chemistry A/B/C.

Gilbert B. Rodman is associate professor of communication studies at the University of Minnesota. From 1995 to 2006, he was a faculty member in the Department of Communication at the University of South Florida. He has also taught graduate seminars as a guest professor at the University of Turku and the University of Heidelberg. He is the former chair of the Association for Cultural Studies and the founder/manager of the CULTSTUD-L listserv, the oldest and largest listserv devoted to cultural studies.

Gilbert’s research is situated at the intersection of cultural studies and critical media studies, with a particular emphasis on the cultural politics of race and racism, digital technologies, intellectual property, and popular culture. He is the author of Why Cultural Studies? (Wiley Blackwell, 2015) and Elvis After Elvis (Routledge, 1996), the editor of The Race and Media Reader (Routledge, 2014), and co-editor of Better Stories: Mapping Cultural Studies with Lawrence Grossberg (Imbricate! Press, 2025) and Race in Cyberspace (Routledge, 2000). With Giulia Pelillo, he is also engaged in an ongoing podcast project entitled Culture Media Language.

Wendy Zajack-Lipshultz is faculty director and assistant professor of the practice for the Integrated Marketing Communications and Design Management & Communications programs at Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies (SCS).

With more than 20 years of experience in public relations, marketing, media relations, and internal communications, Wendy thrives on working to make complex topics and technologies exciting, easy to understand, and relevant to broad audiences. She has spent most of her career working for large global organizations building messaging for multiple audiences using a variety of marketing channels.

Prior to joining SCS, Wendy was the senior director of communications and programs for the Nokia portfolio and innovation team, where she developed thought leadership for the company’s key technology areas, including cloud, IoT, 5G, and its innovation engine, Bell Labs. She is an active blogger and enjoys speaking at industry conferences and universities about the power of communications.

Hailing from eastern North Carolina’s Coastal Plain, Brenner Cobb has been fortunate to have gathered diverse life experiences that prepare him well for his current responsibilities as a US teaching assistant (USTA) in Austrian schools.

Brenner’s yearslong work as an independent contractor in the lawn care and landscaping industry was a formative experience. Building and expanding a customer base during his last years of high school, Brenner met the diverse needs of clients from all walks of life, maintaining and improving their properties with a keen eye for detail. Putting in long hours in the sweltering eastern North Carolina heat, Brenner developed a deep appreciation for the work ethic, lives, and perspective of America’s blue-collar workers.

Beginning his studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2022—shortly after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine—Brenner set out to study international security by pursuing a major in peace, war, and defense. In this department, Brenner gained insight into the nature of security politics and relationships, which remains relevant in today’s turbulent world. Following his interests, Brenner focused his attention in his later university semesters on European political science, especially right-wing populism. Taking a special interest in populist political movements in the German-speaking world, Brenner applied his expanding German-language capabilities to research political attitudes in the east German region of Lusatia. Brenner situated this work within a larger literature review of studies examining populist resistance to the renewable-energy transition, especially in so-called “geographies of discontent.”

Having studied the German language and culture, including literature and philosophy, at university, Brenner developed a fundamental appreciation for the power of a second language. Realizing that a second language enables socioeconomic mobility and, perhaps more importantly, unique and life-shaping experiences, Brenner sought to promote English-language acquisition among young students. Finding an opportunity to step into the role of a mother-speaker language instructor—like those who were instrumental in his own German-language journey—Brenner accepted a position as a USTA in Pinkafeld, Austria.

Brenner now undertakes to present the United States as representatively as possible to Austrian high-school students, offering insights from lived experience into American society, politics, and culture. Brenner’s perspective, informed by both his work as a landscaper and by his achievement of foreign-language proficiency at a flagship university, is one that bridges the urban-rural divide responsible for creating what is conceptualized by some as “two Americas.” Brenner’s mission, that of interpreting and communicating the diversity of the American experience and worldview, comes at a time when America’s identity and direction are contested and re-conceptualized. As transatlantic ties are strained and challenges to democracy, security, and cross-cultural understanding metastasize, Brenner finds deep purpose in his presence and work as a USTA in Austria.

Justine Rozenich is studying social housing policy and Vienna's current housing shortage through the Institute for Social Policy at the Vienna University of Economics and Business. She hopes to use the knowledge she gains to better understand and explore solutions to both the Austrian and US housing crises.

Zoe is a recent graduate of Macalester College with a BA in English, German, and international studies (summa cum laude). Her main research interests are translation, migration, and multi- or postnationalism in contemporary world literature. Through her grant, she is working as a programming and archival assistant at the Literaturhaus am Inn, where she is developing unique and impactful literary events for all ages at little or no cost to attendees.

Maksim is a second-year USTA and a graduate of Macalester College, with a BA in international studies and German and a concentration in human rights and humanitarianism. He is passionate about human rights, international relations, and sustainability, with particular interest in refugee aid, nationalism, and sustainable development.

Grace Truett is a second-year USTA, now employed at the Pädagogische Hochschule in Vienna. Her academic interests include literature, pedagogy, comparative education, and education policy and management. She is thrilled to be applying her fascination with language and love for teaching to work in Austrian classrooms.

Grace is certified to teach English as a foreign language and has been doing so, in various capacities, since 2022. She is so grateful to Fulbright Austria and the Austrian Ministry of Education for making this experience possible.