The three awardees are graduate students based in Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. 

The Einaudi Center has managed Cornell's applications for the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Program since 2000, supporting over 200 students in applying to this competitive opportunity. One in three of Cornell’s Fulbright-Hays applicants wins an award—much higher than the national average of one in ten. 

Meet the Fulbrighters

Christa Núñez

Ghana

Christa Núñez, PhD student in Global Development, will continue her work on black land politics while abroad in Ghana. 

“The Back to Land Movement asserts that displaced Black and Indigenous peoples residing on marginal lands in urban regions and reservations in the U.S. are mobilizing liberatory trajectories toward food and land sovereignty in rural lands,” says Núñez. 

She will collaborate with the University of Ghana to study how migration and international political exchange influence the processes of liberation and collaboration across regions.

Steven McCutcheon Rubio

Mexico

Steven McCutcheon Rubio is a PhD student in Global Development who studies infrastructure security and mobility through the case study of the Corredor Interoceanico en el Istmo de Tehuantepec—"a sprawling transportation, logistics, manufacturing, and energy corridor under development in southern Mexico." 

His project explores how this route “is shaping the emergence of an internal borderland in the region” and how it affects the state, agrarian communities, and migrants. 

Adele Woodmanse

Morocco

Adele Woodmanse is a graduate student in the School of Integrative Plant Science Soil whose work studies adaptive agricultural landscapes in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco. 

“The High Atlas Mountains are a hotspot for biodiversity and climate change, and they conserve agrobiodiversity associated with unique cultural practices,” says Woodmanse. “Cereal crops are central to agricultural systems across the region, but little is known about cereal diversity.” 

In collaboration with researchers at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, Woodmanse seeks to better understand agricultural livelihoods in the region and evaluate the role of cereal diversity. 

We're excited to announce that Cornell's Migrations initiative is stepping into a new phase as the Migrations Program, part of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. Einaudi's newest regional and thematic program will build on the work of Migrations: A Global Grand Challenge to inform real-world policies and outcomes for populations that migrate.

Migrations researchers and students will continue the important work of studying movement across borders, racism and dispossession, and migration of all living things under the leadership of the program's new director, Kathryn Fiorella. Fiorella is an associate professor of public and ecosystem health in the College of Veterinary Medicine.

“We look forward to building the new Migrations Program at Einaudi to advance our understanding of migration and contribute to solutions for one of the most pressing challenges of our time.”

“I am excited to join Migrations and support scholarship and learning on this critical topic,” said Fiorella. 

Fiorella plans to continue expanding Migrations' campuswide footprint established since Global Cornell launched the initiative in 2019.

“Migration has a profound impact on human and wildlife health,” she said. “I'm looking forward to furthering those connections and extending our engagement with faculty in the Master of Public Health program, Department of Public and Ecosystem Health, and College of Veterinary Medicine.”

New Program Directors

Joining the Migrations Program's Kathryn Fiorella are new fall 2024 program directors in the East Asia Program and Southeast Asia Program.

East Asia Program: John Whitman

John Whitman is a professor of linguistics in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S). His main research focus is the problem of language variation in Japanese, Korean, and other languages.

Southeast Asia Program: Marina Welker

Marina Welker is a professor of anthropology in A&S. Her research centers on the ethical relationship between business and society. She is currently studying a clove cigarette company in Indonesia founded by a Chinese immigrant and controlled by his descendants until 2005, when it was taken over by Philip Morris International.

Cornell's 2024–25 Fulbright students include six alumni, eight undergraduate students, and three graduate students whose time abroad will increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. 

Nine of this year's Fulbright awardees will travel to Asian countries, with a particular concentration headed to South Asia. Three of the four national research awards to Nepal this year were given to Cornell applicants.

Alumni Awardees

Madeleine August

Sri Lanka

Project Title: On Generosity and Refuge: Sri Lankan Ambalamas

Field of Study: Architecture

Alexandra (Maz) Do

Indonesia

Project Title: Ordinary Fruit

Field of Study: Literatures in English

Alexis Fintland

Spain

English Teaching Assistant

Field of Study: Labor and Industrial Relations

Ainav Rabinowitz

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Project Title: Domestic Violence Through the Lens of Activists: A Case Study of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Field of Study: Political Science

Hannah Chow Russell

Mexico

Project Title: Mexico Binational Business Program

Field of Study: Economics

Audrey Su

Norway

Project Title: Researching and Educating the Public on the Effect of Toxicants in Large Marine Mammals

Field of Study: Interdisciplinary Studies

Mika Ulmet

Nepal

Project Title: Promoting the Preservation and Consumption of Nepal's Indigenous Grains

Field of Study: Global Development

Undergraduate Awardees

Benjamin Dever-Mendenhall

Slovak Republic

English Teaching Assistant

Grace Kwon

South Korea

Project Title: Sustainable Empowerment through Employment for Individuals with Developmental Disabilities

Field of Study: Labor and Industrial Relations

Max Link

Taiwan

English Teaching Assistant

Elizabeth Taber

Nepal

Project Title: Municipal Waste Management Policy Analysis

Field of Study: Public Policy

Ricco Venterea

Italy

Project Title: Developing a Web Application for Cosmic-ray and Space Physics Data

Field of Study: Astronomy

Desai Wang

Singapore

Project Title: Assessing Urban Outdoor Affordance Using Biometric, Environmental, and Survey Data

Field of Study: Urban Planning

Ashira Weinreich

Nepal

Project Title: Women as Healers in the Bioculturally Diverse Himalayas of Manaslu Conservation Area

Field of Study: Interdisciplinary Studies

Angela Yuan

Sweden

Project Title: Bees in Cities: The Relationship Between Urban Bees and Impervious Surfaces

Field of Study: Environmental Studies

Graduate Awardees

Matthew Duggan

Netherlands

Project Title: Mapping Soniferous Ichthyofauna Assemblage of Deep Coral Reefs

Field of Study: Natural Resources

Tamar Law

Indonesia

Project Title: Mangroves for the Future: Restoration, Climate Mitigation, and Blue Carbon in Indonesia

Field of Study: Global Development