On August 4, 2024, the shadow of Pluto swept across the Earth cast by a star 500 times fainter than the eye can detect. As it happened, UVA Astronomy professor Michael Skrutskie staffed a brand new a new 0.5-meter Hubble Optics telescope in the middle of the Kalahari Desert in South Africa. Skrutskie was part of a six-person team, which also included four UWC faculty and students and fellow UVA Professor Anne Verbiscer. The team had spent about a week in Cape Town setting up the telescope, donated by UVA to UWC, before heading 500 miles north to view the occultation.

Professors Tessa Farmer (Anthropology, Global Studies) and Phoebe Crisman (Architecture, Global Studies) spent the summer in Egypt where they worked on the collaborative research project “Water Reuse, Urban Agriculture, and Heritage Preservation in Cairo's al-Khalifa Neighborhood” in collaboration with Cairo-based Athar Lina Initiative. They spoke with UVA Global about how sustainability and cultural heritage preservation intertwine in this project and why the co-design process is essential to these goals.

This summer, students embarked on a variety of Education Abroad programs, both established and newly introduced, that challenged them to explore the real-world impact of their studies within diverse cultural contexts. Immersed in these unique environments, they gained fresh perspectives that enriched their academic and personal growth.

UVA welcomed two distinguished faculty members from South Africa in April as part of a collaborative initiative supported by the Center for Global Health Equity (CGHE). The initiative supports faculty members through a unique PhD training program that bridges their institutions with UVA, facilitating cross-pollination of expertise and ideas.

Hsin Hsin Liang has taught Chinese at the Department for East Asian Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the University of Virginia for 22 years and will be stepping down this semester. She also received the Chinese Language Teachers Association Lifetime Achievement Award—the highest honor in the field of Chinese language education in the United States. The award ceremony, held during the annual conference of the Chinese Language Teachers Association in St. Louis, Missouri, was attended by more than 400 colleagues.

Earlier this month, Bologna’s mayor and university leadership invited an interdisciplinary delegation from UVA to begin exploratory discussions on the prospect of a formal partnership in pursuit of exciting new research horizons.

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.

In Spring 2024, the Center for Global Inquiry + Innovation awarded its latest round of grants to support impactful global research endeavors led by faculty and graduate students. The grants awarded included eleven Graduate Global Research grants, eight Center Grants and one Global Initiative grant for individual faculty research, three Faculty Global Research with Undergraduates grants, and two Global Programs of Distinction grants for larger, collaborative work.

In a special recorded message at the opening of the Spring 2024 Diplomacy Lab Fair at the US Department of State in Washington DC last month, United States Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said that for every problem, someone, somewhere has an answer, or at least an idea worth trying. Some of the ideas that he referred to came from the University of Virginia students participating in the Diplomacy Lab program.

Doctor of Juridical Science Candidate Jeronimo Lau Alberdi discusses the sharing of global legal knowledge and techniques among in Latin American legal systems, including the roles of Supreme and constitutional courts and international human rights education.

Two University of Virginia medical students were awarded the Kean Travel Fellowship by the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene to support their work in tropical medicine and hygiene in the Global South. The award, set in 1998, allowed the students to travel to Tanzania to work on global health projects in the country supporting research in childhood diarrhea, undernutrition, and tuberculosis.

Activists from all over the world converged at the University of Virginia last week to learn from each other in a three-day event titled People Power Academy. UVA Global spoke to Nobel Peace Prize nominee and Democratic Futures Fellow Félix Maradiaga about his work protecting religious freedom in Nicaragua.

The Newcomb Hall Ballroom was bustling with over 300 student presenters as Global Studies celebrated Global Futures: A Global Studies Symposium last week. Students shared research on environmental sustainability and conservation; public health; global politics and economics; justice, identity and social movements; technology, surveillance and ethics; and engaging the global in Virginia.

South Africa was a major focus for Global Affairs this month with the visit of a pan-University delegation to Cape Town to explore new engagement opportunities, the appointment of a new Director for Global Initiatives who is exploring options for establishing a University office there, and the announcement of a major philanthropic gift that, when complete, will help support need based scholarships for at least 20 undergraduates to study there each year.

Misha Panda is a third-year student at UVA majoring in anthropology with a concentration in medical anthropology, care, and ethics along with a minor in biology. She is drawn to global health and health equity and leads the Doctors Without Borders club at the University. Panda encourages other students to immerse themselves in experiential learning opportunities and adds that community engagement fuels her engagement both within and beyond the university.

Professor of Slavic Languages & Literatures Edith Clowes speaks about the Black Sea Symposium, her own research in the Black Sea region, and about revisioning its productive futures.

Rolando Vargas is a 2023-2025 Postdoctoral Fellow in the Global Studies program and the Art department. He finished his PhD at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 2022 with the dissertation “Kuna Indigenous Media and Knowledge in the Darién Tropical Rain Forest.” He is also a media artist and has presented his creative work across the globe.

Phoebe Crisman, Professor in the School of Architecture and Director of the Global Studies program, speaks about a longstanding collaboration between UVA and the Lake Traverse Reservation in South Dakota and their most recent work on youth education and tallgrass prairie resilience.

In a conversation with UVA Global, Lauren Miller, a professor in UVA’s Environmental Science department shares her work on glaciers, a recent trip to Japan, and the potentially massive impact of Antarctic research on the rest of the world.

The Center for Global Inquiry + Innovation in the Office of the Vice Provost for Global Affairs awarded a new round of grants to support global research for faculty and graduate students.

More than 100 students from across the Grounds with a week’s worth of preparation came together to collaborate and solve a real-world health problem in the annual Global Health Case Competition held by the Center for Global Health Equity. The case – excessive alcohol consumption in South African youth, is a global health problem, one that also resonates in the U.S. healthcare system and the Charlottesville community as well.

Ambassador Steve Mull shares the details of global partnerships and expansion in the works at Global Affairs for 2024.

When Colton Arney was a senior in high school, his English teacher told him about a program that would help set the trajectory for his UVA career. By the end of that fall, he had become a linguistics champion.

Yafrainy Familia is a PhD student in Spanish at UVA. She spoke about her project where she analyzes the work of a series of contemporary Caribbean artists through the lenses of colonial resistance, gender, and race.

Belarusian human rights activist Volya Vysotskaia, Karsh Institute Practitioner Fellow and Serbian political activist Srdja Popovic, and UVA English professor and activist Steve Parks are trying to build a connection between activism and academia. They discuss their recent works and plans for the future.

Second-year Spanish graduate student Elizabeth Mirabal traveled from Havana to UVA to expand her studies in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Latin American literature, Caribbean literature, and Cuban studies. She spoke about ways nostalgia permeates her intellectual interests, as well as her personal experiences in Charlottesville, and shared her advice for students interested in international research.

UVA PhD student Beatriz Silva Da Costa talks about procurements and corruption in Brazil.

Muhammad Tayyab Safdar joined as a Global Studies faculty in Fall 2023. He is currently teaching about global development and perspectives from the Global South based on his research on South-South global development relations, in particular the relationship between China and Pakistan.

The University of Virginia faculty and students spent summer months researching, interning, studying and teaching in different parts of the world, an essential part of UVA experience that was on hold during the pandemic. Here are a few recollections:

Owen Selden is a third-year student majoring in the Human Biology Distinguished Majors Program and a 2023 Center for Global Health Equity University Scholar. He talked about the global health experiences at UVA and in Rwanda that have inspired him to pursue a future in public health.

A delegation from the University of Virginia led by Vice Provost for Global Affairs, Ambassador Stephen D. Mull, visited The Bahamas in August 2023, to assess prospects of the University's academic engagement.

Academic and creative writer Levi Vonk joined the University of Virginia as a Global Studies Assistant Professor in Fall 2023 and is currently teaching courses on inequality in the media and global migration. He discussed his research, writing, and teaching.

In the spring round, 15 Center Grants, 2 G-Pods and 30 graduate students were awarded through CGII for their research projects.

Over 170 student research projects were showcased in the second annual Global Futures: A Global Studies Symposium held on April 25 in the Newcomb Hall Ballroom.