Scholars:

• Dr. Farid Hafez (University of Salzburg), our Botstiber Visiting Professor is doing research on his project “Understanding Islamophobia in a Global and Comparative Perspective” at UC Berkeley. Farid gave a talk in 2016 related to this project at the first Vienna Humanities Festival “Andernorts/Out of Place”, organized by the Wien Museum and the Institute for Human Sciences.
• Dr. Johanna Muckenhuber (University of Graz), is the current Visiting Professor at the University of Minnesota, and is teaching and conducting research on the topic “The Human Right to Access Health Care: Services for Migrants in Research and Teaching.” Johanna has been in Minnesota since late August and has reported back to us that she is overwhelmed in the most positive sense by the great interest students and faculty at UMN take in her project.
• Dr. Marciana Popescu (Fordham University) was the Visiting Professor at MC Innsbruck in fall 2016, where she conducted research for her project “Women Refugees in the European Countries: Challenges, Human Rights, and Innovative Empowerment Practices”. Marciana has recently presented her work in Germany and Greece, and has started to establish collaborations with several individuals and institutions in Austria, including the Vienna University of Business and Economics and the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Human Capital.

Students:

• Community-Based Combined US Student Janaya Crevier is affiliated with intercultural free magazine and fellow Q21 member Das Biber to create interactive digital maps of refugee families’ stories and journeys.
• Community-Based Combined US Student Hamda Yusuf is affiliated with Refugees Welcome, an organization that facilitates the placement of refugees in private homes in Austria rather than camps and group homes. Hamda will also be a Rangel Fellow following her year in Austria.

More:

• The focus of this years’ call for application for our University of Minnesota Visiting Professor is migration and immigration and targets scholars from the humanities and social sciences. The resonance to our call has been very positive: We received 4 completed applications for the University of Minnesota grant from applicants of various academic backgrounds (philosophy, education, social sciences, law), which demonstrates that this topic is relevant and intensely discussed across the board.
• This year marks the launch of a new pilot service learning Fulbright grant in Austria: the Community-Based Combined Grant. Through this grant, US citizens can complete internship or service projects at local Austrian organizations while concurrently taking university courses and acting as part-time teaching assistants in Austrian secondary schools (many of the schools are either thematically related to the grantees’ projects or are in underserved communities).
• Fulbright Austria informs all US program participants about volunteer opportunities in their communities, facilitates opportunities for Fulbrighters and USTAs to tutor local students from underserved communities, and cooks with Fulbrighters at a local soup kitchen once a year.

Scholars:

• Josephine Dorado (The New School) was the Fulbright-Q21/MQ artist-in-residence in spring, working on the project “Some Collisions,” an interactive performance installation that negotiated the current refugee situation, among other things. Josephine collaborated with refugee communities in and around Vienna for this project. She also returned to Vienna in March 2017 and gave a talk for the Fulbright Women's Roundtable on her work teaching refugees in Vienna's Macondo to use interactive virtual reality storytelling entitled "Thriving in the Macondo."
• In April 2016, Dr. Carlos Diaz (Florida Atlantic University) spent 3 weeks at KPH Vienna as Fulbright Specialist on migration. Carlos successfully collaborated with KPH Vienna on the project “Enhancing Interfaith Competences in Austrian Teachers and Teacher Educators”.

Students:

• US Student Adele Eslinger worked with community organizations in Graz, Austria and investigated community-based minority language initiatives there, particularly in the Roma community. She is currently in Americorps working in a farm-to-schools initiative in northwest Washington state.
• US Student and artist Heather Beardsley created mixed-media conceptual maps related to the refugee flows in Europe. Fulbright Austria facilitated a show of these works, entitled “Encoded Elucidations,” in the Vienna Museumsquartier in 2016.