For 2023-24 U.S. Fulbright students, ETAs, and lecturing/research scholars
Call for applications for “Nations into people” supplementary travel grants of NOK 10,000 each. Altogether six grants will be offered for travel in 2023-24 in two rounds, with application deadlines November 3, 2023 (three grants) and February 9, 2024 (three grants). Travel must be completed no later than September 30, 2024. Unsuccessful applicants from round 1 may apply again in round 2 (the reason for two rounds is to share this funding opportunity with grantees arriving spring 2024)
During your stay in Norway you will have ample opportunity to make new friends at your host institutions, as well as at conferences or in other academic settings in Norway/Europe (and don’t forget that a small travel grant is available to help you expand your academic network).
But we also want you to meet Norwegians outside academia, and outside whatever has become your local community in Norway. As you know, the Fulbright program seeks to generate mutual understanding between the United States and other nations through people to people exchange; in Fulbright’s words, “Educational exchange can turn nations into people, contributing as no other form of communication can to the humanizing of international relations.”
Academia is today a highly internationalized and cosmopolitan segment of society, far more so than when the program in Norway was established in 1949. We want to ensure that the people-to-people impact of the program extends beyond university circles to people who may never have heard of the Fulbright program, or have never been to the United States, or have had little international experience. We also want to ensure that your own understanding of Norway is shaped by exposure to a diversity of views and sub-cultures within Norway, and not just by your interaction with colleagues in the rather homogeneous subculture of academia.
To that end, six small “nations into people” grants of NOK 10,000 each will be awarded to help you travel beyond your local stomping ground and make some new acquaintances, and to see a bit of Norway that is not on your academic itinerary. Perhaps you’d like to visit a rural community, a fishing village, a nursing home, a factory, music festival or sports event, an indigenous or ethnically diverse community, a builder of traditional wooden boats or Harding fiddles, or explore some other feature of Norway and Norwegians?
The purpose of this supplemental funding is to accentuate the public diplomacy dimension of the Fulbright program, and to engage with people. And if you can secure a speaking engagement to tell an audience what you’re doing here in Norway as a Fulbrighter, that’s great, but not a requirement (and if you can get some local media coverage, that’s great too…but also not required)
We ask that you send a us a one-page application explaining where you want to go, when, why, and how you will engage and contribute to the “nations into people” concept. Your travel should of course not interfere with your academic activities. Applications will be reviewed and ranked by the Fulbright Commission. Upon completion of travel a short narrative report, with pictures and suitable for printing in our annual report, will be required of each awardee.
The Fulbright Commission is grateful to the Public Affairs Office of the U.S. Embassy in Oslo for funding this “Turning nations into people” supplementary grant.
Contact Petter (petter@fulbright.no) or Rena (rena@fulbright.no) if you have questions.