2 DU Faculty Head Overseas on Fulbright Fellowships

Joshua Wilson (far right) and his family in Helsinki.

Since its inception in 1946, the Fulbright Program—the United States’ flagship international educational exchange program—has sent more than 400,000 scholars across the world to study, teach and do research. 

Eighty-nine of those faculty scholars have come from the University of Denver, the first of whom traveled to China. 

Leasa Weimer, director for global partnerships and the University of Denver’s Fulbright Scholar campus liaison, says she’s been working to build an even bigger Fulbright community at DU.

“We’re bringing in alumni, having them speak about their experiences and having them advise propsective applicants because they're the best promoters, to be quite honest, of the program, and their firsthand experience is a great motivator to get other faculty interested in applying,” she says.

Weimer says receiving a Fulbright grant opens the door to international collaboration with other scholars and educational institutions.

“The scholars come in, meet different scholars around the country, find sweet spots for research and then, all of a sudden, they're co-publishing together,” she says. “They're co-presenting at conferences together; they’re even writing grants together. It can really open the door to facilitate more global engagement for our faculty members.”

This academic year, two University of Denver professors are participating in the Fulbright Program. 

The DU Newsroom spoke with J. Robert Brown Jr., the Lawrence W. Treece Professor of Corporate Governance at the Sturm College of Law, and Joshua Wilson, professor and chair of political science in the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, about their experiences and plans for their Fulbright tenures.

J. Robert Brown Jr. ‒ Italy

Brown was awarded a Fulbright research fellowship at Luiss School of Law in Rome and will travel to Italy in January 2025.

It’s actually Brown’s second Fulbright award—in 1997, he traveled to Almaty, Kazakhstan, to do six months of research.

“It was a pretty earth-shaking and life-altering experience,” Brown says. “Having an opportunity to live in a different culture and experience what life is like elsewhere and outside the U.S. is valuable, and I decided to try to do it again.”

At Luiss, one of the top 50 universities in the world, Brown will spend four months conducting research on Italian corporate governance and give lectures on topics related to global corporate governance.

“I know a lot about the legal system in Italy, in my area of law—I'm a corporate lawyer—and I thought it would be a good place to go, to get a good cultural experience and create some links here, with the University of Denver, and also to also take advantage of my knowledge of law in Italy and do some additional research,” he says.

Brown says he believes that spending time immersed in other cultures is the best way to learn about one’s own culture—something he’s looking forward to doing alongside his wife and Italian students.

“The research will be fun to do,” he says. “It also allows me to understand both different cultures and my own culture even better, and I think bringing that into the classroom is an important thing to do.”

Brown has some advice for prospective Fulbright scholars: Don’t be afraid to stray from the beaten path.

“When I applied, back in the ’90s, to Kazakhstan, I just got the impression it was not extremely competitive, because with the former Soviet Union, no one had ever heard of this country,” he says. “It was a difficult country to sort of live in and travel in, but it was one of the most life-altering experiences I've ever had. And so sometimes when you look at countries that are maybe a little bit less competitive, [it] can be some of the most rewarding experiences that you can have.”

Joshua Wilson ‒ Finland

Wilson was awarded the Fulbright Bicentennial Chair in American Studies to teach at the University of Helsinki and has been in Helsinki, Finland, with his family since August.

His Fulbright project, titled “Pulling Threads to Weave New Cloth: Understanding American Conservatism’s Political Development,” revolves around the study of two conservative political groups and how they both evolved over the last 50 years. These groups, he says, are the “Christian right,” who make up much of today’s Republican Party, and “white ethnics,” who no longer have much political power or representation.

“[White ethnics] are basically the children and grandchildren of Eastern, Central and Southern European immigrants,” Wilson says. “I’m looking at, essentially, why one kind of ‘took off’ and now runs the Republican Party, whereas the other one just kind of disappeared.”

Wilson says living in Helsinki has been an overall positive experience for him and his family. He says the timing was just right for his wife and two children, who were heavily involved in the decision to move abroad for the year.

“I wanted buy-in from them, and so they were super excited to go from the beginning,” Wilson says.

Wilson’s children attend public school in Helsinki, and the family has traveled all around the country. Wilson’s son is even involved with a local ice hockey league.

And Wilson’s responsibilities in Finland are more than just academic. He’s actually been tasked with hosting not one but two Thanksgiving dinners—one for all the Fulbright scholars in Finland and one for his colleagues at the University of Helsinki.

“The Fulbright foundation sources a turkey and stuff for us,” he says. “So, we host, and all these people come from all around the whole country to come have this Thanksgiving. And then I host, actually, a week later, another Thanksgiving for the university here.”

To learn more about DU’s Fulbright connections and opportunities, contact Leasa Weimer at Leasa.Weimer@du.edu.