Two Macquarie researchers have received scholarships from the Australian-American Fulbright Commission. The flagship foreign exchange program is one of the most renowned scholarship programs in the world.

The Fulbright Program aims to increase bilateral research collaboration, cultural understanding and the exchange of ideas. It has grown to become the largest educational exchange scholarship program in the world, operating in more than 160 countries.

Associate Professor Courtney Fung, from the Department of Security Studies and Criminology received the Fulbright Professional Scholarship in Australian-American Alliance Studies, funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. She will undertake her scholarship at Georgetown University this year.

In addition to her role as Associate Professor in National Security, Intelligence and Cyber Security, Fung is an Associate Fellow of Harvard University’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and an Associate Fellow at the Lowy Institute. Her current research looks at how rising powers address the norms and provisions for global governance and international security, with a primary focus on China.

Fung’s Fulbright research will examine how Australia and the United States can best cooperate as emerging powers reshape the United Nations agenda.

Madi Day, from the Department of Indigenous Studies, received the Fulbright Sir John Carrick New South Wales Scholarship, funded by the New South Wales State Government, and will undertake their scholarship at Southern Connecticut State University this year.

Day is a career researcher who works across Indigenous studies, trans studies and gender studies. They are completing their PhD titled Coloniality, gender and heterosexuality in so-called Australia.

Day’s Fulbright research will offer a comparative study of coloniality, gender and heterosexuality across Australia and the United States as settler colonial nation-states. The research will also examine how anti-colonial approaches are integrated into gender studies departments in the United States, and whether this could be improved in gender studies in Australia.