Five UT professors are spanning the globe as Fulbright Scholars this year.
The Fulbright Program is a prestigious international exchange initiative that awards about 1,100 grants to American scholars each year. Funded by the US government, Fulbright Scholars are chosen based on their leadership and academic merits and their abilities to teach, conduct research, and contribute to solutions for shared international concerns.
The scholars for this academic year are:
Ben Barton, law professor. Barton is teaching comparative law at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia, with a focus on American civil, constitutional, and criminal law. He will also lead a seminar on comparative judicial behavior, highlighting the growing use of behavioral economics, psychology, and economic analysis to study judicial incentives and behavior in civil law and common law. The seminar will use Barton’s 2011 book, The Lawyer-Judge Bias in the American Courts.
Gerard Cohen-Vrignaud, assistant professor in English. Cohen-Vrignaud is lecturing at Cadi Ayyad University in Marrakech, Morocco. His project, Cultural Translation in the Maghreb, allows him to teach courses on orientalism in literature and translation theory and practice. He is also continuing to study the Arabic language and the writings of the turn-of-the-century historical novelist Jurgi Zaydan.
Asafa Jalata, professor of sociology. Jalata is teaching and conducting research on the evolution of democracy in Botswana. Specifically, he is teaching the sociology of development at the undergraduate and graduate levels at the University of Botswana, Gaborone, and engaging in research to write articles and a comparative book to be titled Cultural Capital and Democracy in Botswana and Ethiopia. His work focuses on which factors contributing to the economic and democratic successes of the country and how more successes can be achieved.
Peter Krawczel, assistant professor in animal science. Krawczel is teaching and conducting research in animal behavior and ethology in Croatia. Specifically, he is teaching at the University of Osijek and investigating the effect of establishing a dairy welfare assessment program.
Chunlei Su, associate professor of microbiology. Su is helping establish a collaborative research team to study molecular epidemiology and population genetics of toxoplasmosis in human patients in Brazil. Toxoplasmosis is an illness caused by the parasite Toxoplasma gondii, which infects warm-blooded vertebrates. It is the second most common cause of foodborne illness in the United States, and scientists in Brazil have made historically important contributions to its study.
Since its establishment in 1946, the Fulbright Program has given approximately 310,000 students, scholars, teachers, artists, and scientists the opportunity to study, teach, and conduct research; exchange ideas; and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns. The Fulbright US Scholar Program is administered by the Council for International Exchange of Scholars, a division of the Institute of International Education.
Pia Wood, associate provost and director of the Center for International Education, and Alan Rutenberg, in the Office of Research and Engagement, are the Fulbright representatives for the university.
For more information about the awards, visit the Fulbright Program website.
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C O N T A C T :
Whitney Heins (865-974-5460, wheins@utk.edu)