Nnenna Onyima will receive her PhD in French this month, finishing her UVA studies. Originally from Nigeria, she earned her BA in French from Imo State University, Nigeria and her MA in French from the University of Virginia. While at UVA, she participated in the International Student Citizen Leaders Fellowship, a yearlong program which gives international students the opportunity to design and realize a project to support UVA’s international student community.

Anu Karippal is a doctoral student in anthropology studying the relationships between humans and elephants in South Asia. She caught up with UVA Global to discuss her research, her experiences as an international student from India, and her thoughts on relationships between humans and with the more than human world.

Afghan artivist Omaid Sharifi and UVA student Samman Akbarzada discuss how they use art to advocate for and with the people of Afghanistan, in the U.S. and abroad.

University leadership has been monitoring reports of heightened immigration enforcement activity across U.S. campuses in recent weeks, including the cancellation of student visas and the detention and threatened deportation of international students and faculty. We recognize and sympathize with the alarm and anxiety that many of you experience when witnessing the sudden detention and threatened deportation of international students, scholars, and faculty.

Samman Akbarzada is a second-year student double majoring in political philosophy, policy and law (PPL) and English literature (APPW), with a minor in urban planning. Like for many students, coming to the University of Virginia was a lonely experience for her at times before finding her community. Unlike many students, she faced that difficulty 7,000 miles from home after fleeing as a political refugee. 

Ambassador Steve Mull, Vice Provost for Global Affairs, celebrates UVA’s international community of nearly 2500 students and scholars and hundreds more in our faculty and staff. This community stands as a remarkable source of strength and vibrancy in our student life, research progress, and community service.

Ambassador Steve Mull, Vice Provost for Global Affairs, affirms UVA's commitment to global experiences, despite a rapid cascade of executive orders and other policy changes from the federal government over the past several weeks.

This fall, the University of Virginia welcomed 416 students from India to Grounds, a significant increase from previous years and part of a larger trend in international education in the US.

The Graduate and Professional Students of Africa (GAPSA) hosted its inaugural ball and awards ceremony this month. Founded just two years ago as part of the International Student Citizen Leader Fellowship, GAPSA began as “a small, informal gathering of African graduate students sharing food and fellowship in their apartments during the pandemic,” said Nnenna Onyima, a Nigerian PhD candidate in French and GAPSA’s founder. Today, GAPSA is a registered CIO with over 100 members and a six-member Executive Board representing diverse programs across Grounds.

Omokolade Omigbule is a third-year anthropology doctoral student and an interdisciplinary doctoral fellow in Indigenous studies at the University of Virginia. He is a budding Black Atlantic archaeologist from Osun state, southwest Nigeria. In this interview, he discusses his journey into archaeology and his hopes to empower communities through history, and the importance of open-mindedness in the pursuit of knowledge and cross-cultural connection.

With a robust lineup of over 30 events, this year’s Global Week engaged students, faculty, and staff in learning and celebrating UVA’s global connections and featured an exciting range of activities, including panels, cultural showcases, and information sessions.

Hang Nguyen is a third-year PhD student in Statistics and a former Citizen Leader Fellow (2022-2023). For her Citizen Leader Fellowship project, she set out to understand the disproportionate number of Honor reports among international students and conducted a year-long ethnographic study on international students’ perceptions of academic integrity. This project paved the way to her ongoing advocacy and involvement in Honor. She is originally from Vietnam and went to high school and college in North Carolina.

The International Student Citizen Fellowship is celebrating its third successful year of student-led, community-focused projects. The fellowship, which started in 2021, encourages and enables international students, student-athletes, and transfer students to play a leading role in making UVA a place where their communities can thrive. “We provide students with a set of tools to carry out an original community building project which grows out of their experiences, interests, and values,” international student and scholar advisor Caren Freeman said.
 

This spring, Abdulelah Alotaibi completes his MA in Linguistics in the department of Anthropology. Originally from Saudi Arabia, he first came to the United States in 2014 on a Fulbright Language Teaching Assistantship. He spent that year teaching Arabic at the University of Maine and came back from 2018-2019 to participate in a one-year exchange program for Saudi teachers, Building Leadership for Change through School Immersion, at Arizona State University. Alotaibi chatted with UVA Global on his varied experiences in the U.S., his teaching, and his plans for the future.

Pieter Giliomee is graduating with M.S. in the McIntire School of Commerce this year. In a conversation with UVA Global, he shares his international background, his reasons for choosing UVA, and his plans for the future.