Two Iowa State faculty, both working in the humanities, have received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar fellowship for the 2024-25 academic year from the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. They'll join hundreds of other U.S. citizens who will teach or conduct research abroad through the program. They are:
John Levis
John Levis, professor of English and founder of "Journal of Second Language Pronunciation," will spend February-June 2025, at Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey.
Levis' current research focuses on suprasegmentals -- the intonation, stress and rhythm of words and sentences that make a language easily understandable. In Ankara, he'll lead a course for future teachers of English as a foreign language, to observe:
- What kinds of things language learners acquire by studying suprasegmentals.
- Whether this learning leads to changes in their own pronunciation.
He'll use content from his forthcoming book, "Suprasegmentals: Research and Pedagogy for English Pronunciation" (to be published by Cambridge University Press), to guide what the teachers study in the course.
Elisa Rizo
Elisa Rizo, associate professor of world languages and cultures, will spend February-May 2025, at the Milá y Fontanals Institution for Research in the Humanities (part of the Spanish National Research Council), Barcelona, Spain.
Most of Rizo's time will be spent on research in the city's archives of newspapers, advertisements, festival reports and plays from the time period 1808-1978 and particularly 1939-75 (during Francisco Franco's dictatorship) and 1976-78 (Spain's transition to democracy). Her research explores how "Spanishness" made Black people invisible in the Spanish empire, and how some Black communities resisted this by publishing their own materials. Rizo also will lead a workshop on research methodologies for researchers in the social sciences and humanities associated with the research council.
Next application window closes in September
Since 1946, the Fulbright Program has been the U.S. government's flagship international academic exchange program. It's funded through an annual federal appropriation to the state department, whose Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs directs the program. Participating governments and host institutions, corporations and foundations in foreign countries provide additional funding.
The application period for the 2025-26 Fulbright competition is open through Sept. 16. An information webinar on the application process will be held Wednesday, Aug. 14; learn more.
