Student
Undergraduate Global Scholars
Details
Undergraduate Global Scholars are student leaders in the campus community. Each year, they contribute to the campus conversation on a timely global topic.
This competitive fellowship program is open to students from all colleges and majors with a passion for big global questions and speaking across differences. We will provide a toolkit of resources for weighing challenging questions as you build your practical skills in global public discourse.
Your unique skills—whether you are a writer, scholar, activist, artist, poet, or hands-on practitioner—play an important role in imagining the future. By the end of the program, you'll be an active global citizen and champion for social impact.
2025–26 Theme: Is (Cutting) International Aid Good?
The work of last year's Global Scholars contributed to the Einaudi Center's 2025–26 theme: Is (Cutting) International Aid Good?
Large cuts to U.S. foreign aid threaten global health, education, people who are migrating, peace and stability, the environment, democratic governance, food security, and more. As the landscape of international aid evolves, the world faces new questions about the impact of aid on communities, what makes international aid effective, and how to move forward.
Our Global Scholars grappled with these questions in their capstone projects, considering the multiple perspectives that shape the global landscape of international aid and the communities impacted.
What You'll Learn
The Einaudi Center creates a space for studying and practicing how individuals and communities can engage about, with, and across difference and disagreement to work toward collective understanding and action on challenging global issues. Our focus will be on skills of discourse, empowering you to thoughtfully address big questions on campus and beyond. You will learn how to:
- Analyze complex global issues.
- Understand issues from multiple perspectives.
- Test your ideas through research.
- Respectfully interact with communities impacted by an issue.
- Responsibly engage in advocacy.
- Craft and share a capstone project with the campus community.
Mentors and Networking
As a Global Scholar, you'll meet and engage with prominent experts and leaders visiting the Einaudi Center, including this year's speakers at the Bartels World Affairs Lecture and Lund Critical Debate.
You'll attend participatory workshops led by expert researchers and practitioners on the year's topic. You'll also help plan and contribute to a campus showcase.
Deadline
Applications for 2025-26 are due September 14, 2025.
Amount
$500 stipend
How to Apply
Fill out the online application. Selected students will be notified by early October and the program will begin mid-October.
Questions?
Visit us at the International Fair on August 27 or join us for an information session on September 4.
If you have questions about the Global Scholars program or your application, email Einaudi Center academic programs.
Additional Information
Funding Type
- Fellowship
Role
- Student
Program
Matt Finck
IES Director's Fellow 2024-2025
Matt Finck is a historian of Modern Europe with a focus on intellectual and cultural history. His research explores the political culture of revolutionary socialism. His dissertation examines the influence astronomy and other reflections on celestial bodies had on the political imaginaries of socialist, anarchist, and communist thinkers and movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His other research interests include democratic and political theory, utopian imaginaries, visual and material culture, and critical theory.
Additional Information
Frances Cayton
IES Graduate Fellow, Spring 2026
Frances Cayton's research focuses on questions surrounding democratic backsliding, civil society, and political communication. Her dissertation, specifically, examines how the underlying level of pluralism in civil society affects the durability and degree of grassroots support available for backsliding incumbents across the Visegrad 4 (Poland, Hungary, Czechia, and Slovakia). IES support has facilitated pre-dissertation language training and fieldwork, and upcoming dissertation fieldwork that will include interviews, focus groups, and surveys.
Additional Information
Chris Mingo
IES Graduate Fellow 2023-24, IES Director's Fellow 2024-25
Chris Mingo is a PhD student in the History Department specializing in modern and contemporary European history. He is broadly interested in the histories of fascism, nationalism, and European imperialism, as well as political economy, and literary studies. His dissertation research examines Fascist Italy's parallel projects of imperial expansion and the development of a corporatist economy in the wake of the 1929 Wall Street crash.
Additional Information
Paige Ho Chung
Graduate Student
Degree Pursued: PhD
Anticipated Degree Year: -
Committee Chair/Advisor: Nick Salvato
Discipline: Hip-Hop Studies, Sound Studies, Vietnamese Diasporic Studies, Performing Studies
Primary Language: Vietnamese, Thai, German, English
Additional Information
Iris Luo
Graduate Student
Degree Pursued: PhD
Anticipated Degree Year: 2025
Committee Chair/Advisor: Renata Leitao
Discipline: Apparel Design
Primary Language: Mandarin, English
Additional Information
Ngoc Phuong Linh Nguyen
Graduate Student
Degree Pursued: PhD
Anticipated Degree Year: 2027
Discipline: Economics
Primary Language: Vietnamese, English
Research Interest: My research area is public policy and development economics. My past works include (1) productivity improvement from land consolidation program in Viet Nam, and (2) comparison of Covid policies in Asia. My future plan involves universal basic incomes in the Southeast Asia area.
Additional Information
Saomai Phuong Nguyen
Graduate Student
Degree Pursued: PhD
Anticipated Degree Year: 2030
Committee Chair/Advisor: Derek Chang
Discipline: (Asian) American History
Primary Language: Vietnamese
Research Interest: Saomai is interested in US empire and militarism, Third World struggles and imaginations, and intergenerational refugee repertoires of storytelling as competing but interconnected projects of knowledge production.
Additional Information
Xintong Chen
Graduate Student; Migrations Graduate Fellow
Xintong Chen studies the auditory cultures of migration across the South China Sea from the 17th to 20th centuries. Her research uncovers how sound and listening practices created shared “cultural commons” among diverse groups of migrants and sojourners, offering a new perspective on migration as a lived and cultural process beyond political or economic frameworks.
Degree Pursued: PhD
Anticipated Degree Year: 2029
Committee Chair/Advisor: Eric Tagliacozzo
Discipline: Southeast Asian History
Additional Information
Priyanka Sen
IES Graduate Fellow 2024-2025
Priyanka Sen is a Ph.D. candidate in the HAUD program. Her research investigates architectural entanglements with spatial geographies, migration and environmental histories, focusing on the South Asian diaspora and its intertwinement with settlement, citizenship, and the transnational immigrant experience.