In profile: Five Fulbright Canada winners announced

The University of Calgary will have five Fulbright Canada winners on campus this year.

The prestigious awards are given to university students and professors to enhance mutual understanding between people in the United States and Canada.

For the 2013-’14 year, three people from the University of Calgary will travel to post-secondary institutions in the United States to conduct their research, and two American scholars will come to the University of Calgary.

Among the winners is Magdalena Muir, research associate at the University of Calgary’s Arctic Institute of North America, who says her renewable energy desalination pilot project in the Caribbean and Americas is the continuation of one research theme under the Sustainable Energy Development project.

“I would like the Fulbright Scholarship to advance the research topic of energy and water in the context of climate adaptation and mitigation,” she says.

She will travel to the Columbia Climate Center and the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York City and to the University of Delaware.

“Linkages and research on sustainable energy and water are critically important on both sides of the border and internationally. I look forward to working with my American colleagues in developing pilot projects and greater capacity in the Caribbean and the Americas,” she says.

Bowling Green State University history professor Rebecca Mancuso says she is eager to further her work in Calgary. She is studying the history of immigration in Canada in the 1920s.

“I am a Canadianist working in the United States, a lonely field of study, I can tell you, and have found in the last few years that my research topic has increasingly led me toward Western Canada,” says Mancuso.

In particular, Mancuso is studying the influx of British immigrants who were encouraged to come to Canada. “The British and Canadian states harboured ideals regarding British ‘pluck’ and of the fertility of Canada's frontier areas, as well as hubristic notions of the ability of bureaucracy to manage immigrants and the settlement process. The land, however, was marginal and the settlers woefully unprepared to farm,” she says.

While in Calgary, she plans to use the archives at the university and at the Glenbow Museum and also hopes to meet the descendants of immigrants and learn about their families’ histories.

This year’s five winners are:

• Fulbright student Kieran Jimenez, University of Calgary

Jimenez will continue to study the relationship between evolutionary psychology with regard to ethical and moral questions at Columbia University.

• Fulbright scholar Magdalena Muir, University of Calgary

Muir is working on a pilot project to confirm a suitable location in the Americas, identify a client, develop a project plan, and begin the process of seeking financing for a renewable energy – desalination – water treatment facility that will displace imported hydrocarbons, reduce air pollution and improve water quality and quantity, thereby allowing local adaptation and mitigation of climate change.

• Fulbright student Annie Rouse, Monterey Institute of International Studies

Rouse, a graduate student from the Monterey Institute of International Studies, will conduct a life cycle analysis on Alberta’s industrial hemp bio-composite industry.

• Fulbright scholar Rebecca Mancuso, associate professorof history at Bowling Green State University

A Canadian specialist, Mancuso's scholarly mission involves fostering a better understanding of Canada’s importance to the United States.

• Killam fellow Kathryn Toner, biological sciences major, University of Calgary

Toner will attend the University of Kentucky for a semester and plans on developing a unique research project first involving the biological cellular and molecular mechanisms of hearing, and then applying those findings to the clinical side of hearing and audiology.