Fulbright Award recipients head to Peru, Brazil and South Korea
Three Binghamton students were awarded grants to pursue international research and teaching opportunities
When she first began to think about a Fulbright, Mikaelah Freeman considered how a trip to Brazil would relate to her academic interests. But her connection to the South American country runs deeper than that — down to the bone.
Her father was Brazilian and, after his death, she thought about how a forensic anthropologist would identify him if they came across his remains. The traditional methods used to identify victims of crimes or potential suspects often rely on certain ancestry data to determine a person’s facial features. This practice, however, began with negative intentions and is unreliable to boot.
“At its origins, the whole practice started in race science and making certain groups inferior. In general, it’s not very accurate,” said Freeman, a doctoral student in biomedical anthropology, with a certificate in forensic health. “So far, it’s still somewhat used in the U.S., because there’s no other way of describing a phenotype. We have sex estimations, height, even age, but there’s nothing to describe what a person might have physically looked like.”
Freeman is one of three Binghamton students awarded Fulbright grants for 2024-25 to pursue international research and teaching opportunities. She will soon travel to Brazil to work with university professionals investigating the use of forensic genetics, which may someday replace outdated identification methods.
Freeman was exposed to the founding concepts of genetic genealogy through the Innocence Project, where she interned. Brazil is the perfect place to begin her research, Freeman believes; many people there, like her father, have mixed ancestry.
“In a place like Brazil, where people are multi-generationally mixed, there’s no way to truly separate people via ancestry. I wanted a population where there was more ‘admixture’ in people, to prove we need some other method,” she said.
Applying for a Fulbright
Applying for a Fulbright Study/Research Award, offered through the U.S. Department of State, involves multiple steps. Applicants must first connect with Elisa Camiscioli, a professor of history and the Fulbright advisor on Binghamton University’s campus. From there, Camiscioli will help students refine their proposals in one-on-one meetings and with a panel of experts, including those with in-country or international grant-writing experience.
“It’s never too early to get in touch with me. Ideally, they must see me by their junior year, working on the application essentially a year in advance,” Camiscioli said. “I try to direct students off the beaten track. Many want to do the UK, which is also the most competitive. I try to match them up; you must have a real connection to the country to apply, but I always say you could fall in love with any country.”
Once the application is submitted to the Fulbright U.S. Student Program, its National Selection Committee decides on a list of semi-finalists. Those applications are passed on to Fulbright committees in the prospective host countries, which name the finalists that best reflect the program’s goals of intellectual and cultural exchange. Acceptance into the program is very competitive, although Binghamton tends to excel; this year, half of the 10 applicants went on to the semi-finalist stage. In fact, Camiscioli hopes that more students will apply.
Applicants must show that their research could not occur anywhere other than within the host country. This is especially true for Brittany Fullen, a doctoral student in anthropology, who will be conducting an archaeological dig in Peru.
Working alongside a Peruvian team and among the local community, Fullen will be looking for ceramic pots, with a specific stylized series of images called the Southern Andean Iconographic Series (SAIS). Fullen studies the ancient Wari people, who occupied the area known as Ayacucho thousands of years ago. SAIS images are spread across Peru and many early experts identified Tiwanaku, another city and civilization where these images appeared on buildings, as their starting point.
That narrative, however, may be incorrect — which is what Fullen is investigating.
“We don’t have a lot of radiocarbon dates, which tell us calendar years of when things happen. My project is going back and excavating additional rooms and architectural structures to date when this imagery first appeared,” she said. “Then we can start looking at the rest of the Wari empire in these more provincial spaces, where you have a lot of more fluidity between imperial and local agendas, and relationships to other people in the surrounding regions or the pre-Columbian landscape as a whole.”
Still, it’s a tall order; preservation issues are prevalent. Textiles, where this imagery might also appear, rarely survive the ages. Looting is common, and, in other cases, entire sites can disappear to make way for civilization today—exactly what happened with several of Fullen’s earlier proposed sites.
“Cultural patrimony is important for proving identity and especially for the economy,” Fullen said. “A lot of people came before the Incas and we have a lot of important, exciting sites that help you understand Peru’s history, but also help you understand human history. How do these independent centers develop where people start to organize themselves in new ways? How do cities emerge for the first time? What happens when they don’t exist anymore? What are people doing and how are they building their lives?”
Fullen hopes to host schoolchildren at the site and organize a pottery-making seminar between Peruvian archaeologists and ceramicists, who she feels have a lot to learn from each other. She will also help future researchers by hiring archaeology students who need a dig on their resumes to be formally licensed in the country.
Learning by teaching
Unlike Freeman and Fullen, whose projects fall under the Open Study/Research Awards category, Henley Verhagen ’23 will travel to South Korea to teach English to schoolchildren through the English Teaching Assistant (ETA) side of the program.
An alum of the linguistics and Korean studies programs, Verhagen has always felt a connection to language. Growing up homeschooled, she passionately explored English grammar before becoming fascinated with Korean, which places the verb at the end of a sentence. Although she went on to teach herself the writing system in just three days, she was focused at the time on ballet. An overuse injury led her to reassess her future.
“In some ways, I’m very grateful, because I think if I hadn’t had the injury, I would have had more doubt about whether I wanted to stop ballet,” she said. “At Binghamton, I was able to make a lot of connections with different people and develop a lot of different interests, and it’s led me to this Fulbright award.”
Verhagen came to Binghamton during the COVID-19 pandemic, which posed some problems for language learners. Luckily, through a mix of good instructor support and dedication, she still found ways to learn. With the English Language Institute on campus, for example, she mentored non-English speakers as an English-speaking assistant; she also joined Binghamton University’s K-pop club as a dance instructor and became involved with the student helpline, SEEK, which helped her connect with others and actively listen during conversations.
Verhagen believes the Fulbright program is the next step in her educational journey.
“As someone interested in linguistics, it’s very confining to only study language academically,” she said. “Most of the conversations you’re having are, ‘Oh, what did you have for lunch today?’ Or, ‘Do you want to go to the movies tomorrow?’ I’m excited to go to a place where I can really challenge myself to communicate in a different language and form connections with people in a context that feels more personal than it does when you’re studying in the classroom.”
In addition to learning more about Korean, Verhagen hopes to learn more about herself, too.
“Speaking a different language or experiencing a different way of life helps you understand the diversity of human experience, but it also helps you reflect on your own,” she reflected. “You’re not going to understand yourself unless you understand how things can be different.”
