Pardee School Students and Alumni Named Fulbright Semi-Finalists
Ximena Aragon (BA IR ’20), Tima Dasouki (BA IR ’22), Catherine Kreider (BA IR ’21), Andrew Reilly (BA Italian & Linguistics and IR ’22), Sylvia Stoyanova (BA IR ’22), and Miruna Visuian (BA IR ’22) have advanced to the final stage of review in the Fulbright U.S. Student Program.
For the 2022 Fulbright cycle, Boston University saw a record 66 applications from seniors, graduate students, and recent alumni. We’re proud to say that six of the 37 entrants named Fulbright Semi-Finalists by the U.S. National Screening Committee are members of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies community.
Aragon, a second-time Fulbright Semi-Finalist, is currently working at the United Nations Foundation in D.C. Through Fulbright’s IE School of Global and Public Affairs Master’s Award, she will pursue the Master in International Development. If granted the award, Ximena will return to study in Madrid as she did in her Junior year of study abroad and have the opportunity to fully emerge in the Spanish culture by serving as a Cultural Ambassador of the United States.
Dasouki is an undergraduate senior studying International Relations and Middle East and North Africa Studies at the Pardee School of Global Studies. She was recently awarded the Pickering fellowship, where she will complete a two-year master’s program and serve as a Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Department of State. Tima is an alumna of the Critical Language, Boren, and Gilman Scholarships for the study of Turkish. The Fulbright scholarship that she was selected for is the English Teaching Assistantship in Turkey, with which she would teach English in Turkish classrooms while serving as a U.S. cultural ambassador.
Kreider is working for an International Charity, the Organization for World Peace, as a Senior Writer, Climate Change/Environmental Conflict Advisor, and the OWP’s Crisis Index coordinator. Under a Fulbright scholarship, she hopes to complete an MA in Global Development at the University of Copenhagen. Catherine plans on studying the relationship between climate change and development. She plans on writing her dissertation on how sustainable development in climate-change-vulnerable countries can combat regional insecurities.
Reilly is a senior majoring in Italian & Linguistics and International Relations. Having studied Italian for nearly a decade, he would be thrilled to put his linguistic and intercultural communication skills to use while teaching English in Italy. Reily hopes that the Fulbright Grant would steer him toward a career either within the State Department or in the field of education.
Stoyanova is a senior majoring in International Relations with a functional track of International Economics, Business, and Politics and a regional track of Europe. She has spent a lot of time studying, interning, and working abroad. Receiving a Fulbright will allow her to continue learning about new cultures while also teaching others about her own American culture.
Visuian is a senior studying International Relations with minors in Religion and German. With the Fulbright Combined Grant in Austria, Miruna will participate in research at the University of Innsbruck and serve as a teacher at a local secondary school. Through her research, she hopes to analyze how the Austrian People’s Party reacted to the pressure of the migration crisis of 2015 by studying rhetorical divides between local and national levels.
The Fulbright U.S. Student Program provides grants for individually designed research or arts projects, graduate degree programs, or for English Teaching Assistantships in participating countries outside the United States. Over the past ten years, Boston University students have seen much success with the Fulbright Program, with more than 60 students engaging in research, graduate study, creative arts project, and teaching across many of the 140+ Fulbright partner countries. Of note, BU has once again been named a National Top Producer of Fulbright grantees for 2021-2022. For more information on the Fulbright program, visit BU’s Fellowship and Scholarship website. View the full list of BU’s 2022 Fulbright Semi-Finalists online.