Four UW–Madison students have been selected to receive Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) awards for 2024–2025. This prestigious honor will allow these doctoral students to pursue international research on a variety of subjects, including pregnancy and reproductive health, antifascist education, queer and trans community building, and the intersection between music and democracy.
By prioritizing regions and cultures often underrepresented in U.S. academic curricula, the program supports research that enhances both scholarly knowledge and the nation’s capacity to engage with the wider world. The Fulbright-Hays DDRA Program is administered by the U.S. Department of Education.
The program offers a unique opportunity for U.S. doctoral candidates to conduct full-time dissertation research in international settings and encourages the exploration of foreign languages and area studies across a wide range of academic disciplines, fostering a deeper understanding of global issues. Explore the Fulbright-Hays DDRA program at UW–Madison by connecting with UW Fulbright Coordinator Mark Lilleleht, visiting the campus Fulbright website, or by attending an information session on October 29.
Learn about the four doctoral students selected for Fulbright-Hays DDRA awards and their plans for research abroad.

Corinne M. Hale
Department of Anthropology
Hale will conduct ethnographic research to study pregnancy experience among Haitian migrants and relocated families in the Dominican Republic. This research will consider how childbearing Haitians negotiate pregnancy and reproductive health encounters, as they construct complex patchworks of care in and beyond the clinic. The goal of this research is to better understand how migrants and immigrants fill gaps in pregnancy care when healthcare spaces are not often considered safe as well as detail the power structures at play. Hale will use interviews, participant observation, and photovoice methods to document the reproductive lived experiences of Haitian migrants.
In addition to deep ethnographic work, Hale plans to help establish a pregnancy and birth-centered coalition alongside community partners to address the needs of childbearing Haitians and families.

Francisco Hernández Moleres
Department of History
Hernández Moleres will examine the influence of the Spanish Civil War in the two countries that hosted most of its refugees, France and Mexico. His focus is on the writings of teachers, pedagogues, and policy reformers, who drew from the Spanish example to advocate for various and contested forms of antifascist education in the two decades after the war. Hernandez Moleres’s proposed research travel will begin in summer 2025 and cover six months in Mexico (Mexico City, Morelia, and Pachuca) and two months in France (Paris, Toulouse, and Gap) to work in state archives and conduct oral history interviews.

Dragan Katarina Mikulin
Language Sciences Program, Department of Geography
Dragan Katarina Mikulin is a linguistic geographer who will be conducting research in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, using an interdisciplinary approach to research queer and trans community building, resilience, and futurity. Ze looks forward to collaboration with linguists, geographers, and community members in both countries. In hir dissertation research, Dragan combines methods from cartography/GIS and linguistics to conduct a geolinguistic ethnography of queer and trans Slovaks and Czechs in a post-shooting context, exploring how mental map tasks contribute to discourses of embodiment. Importantly, this project focuses on queer and trans communities themselves rather than rhetoric about these communities. Ze aims to document new and continued linguistic and performative strategies for community-building, community care, and queer liberation. These strategies help queer and trans people see themselves in the past, present, and future.

Kharis Ralph
Department of History
Ralph’s research investigates the link between labor, music, and the history of democratic politics in South Korea. From February 2025 to February 2026, she will be conducting archival research and oral history interviews, while also engaging in participant observation at labor rallies and cultural events in order to understand both the sonic and embodied dimensions of workers’ music-making practices.
Story by Steve Barcus