UVA’s East Asia Center is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. To inaugurate the beginning of its second half-century, they are hosting a conference on April 18, 2026, featuring UVA graduates who are experts in their fields for panel discussions including presentations on Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia, and in the field of Buddhist studies. UVA Global will catch up with many of the speakers in a monthly Q&A series leading up to the conference.

In Pondicherry clinics and New Delhi policy offices, UVA students and researchers spent summer 2025 working alongside Indian partners to confront one of the world’s deadliest infectious diseases: tuberculosis. Since 2014, The Ram Family Fund, an award generously established by Dr. Anil K. Ram in honor of Drs. Bellamane M. Ram and Anjan Kumari Ram, who practiced medicine in India and the U.S., has allowed UVA students from any school to travel to Southern India to participate in research collaborations or clinical care in the region.

From sport to social movements, global health to global humanities, our initiatives in South Africa developed in an abundance of directions this summer.

Dr. Kathryn Quissell (global studies, public health sciences) has been selected for the Global Challenges Teaching Award by the US-UK Fulbright Commission. She will work with her UVA team including Tina Mangieri, director of global initiatives, and Sarah Cochran, senior director of learning experience & digital innovation, in collaboration with a team at the University of Leicester to co-design teaching modules on health inequity for a virtual exchange course to be taught in Fall 2026.

Greatness Olaitan is a fourth-year PhD candidate in chemistry. Originally from Nigeria, Olaitan graduated with first class honors from the University of Lagos, Nigeria, in 2018, where he earned his Bachelor of Science in chemistry. His early research experience in Nigeria working with Professor Wesley Okiei to design electrochemical sensors for in vitro measurement of biomolecules laid the foundation for his current work at UVA.

PhD candidate Robert Sanchis-Álvarez (Spanish, Italian & Portuguese) describes his discovery of a Spanish colonial-era newspaper from the Philippines at a flea market. With funding from the Center for Global Inquiry and Innovation, Sanchis was able to start a two-year process of preservation and repatriation.

Chris Colvin has been selected as the new director for the Global Studies Program. Colvin is a professor in the Department of Anthropology and has taught in the global public health track since 2017. He is a medical anthropologist with extensive experience researching HIV and masculinity; health activism and community health governance; trauma, subjectivity and narrative; and the interface between communities and health systems in the context of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and maternal and child health.

The Center for Global Inquiry and Innovation closes out the 2024-2025 academic year during what can only be described as a season of consequence and challenge. In the most important ways, this grant cycle has been enormously successful.

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.

Professor Len Schoppa has been awarded The Order of the Rising Sun by the Emperor of Japan. The Order of the Rising Sun is one of Japan's highest honors, awarded for distinguished service to Japan and its people in various fields. Schoppa, who has taught in the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia since 1990, specializes in the politics and political economy of Japan. He spoke to UVA Global about his work between Japan and the U.S. and his advice for students interested in Japan.

Pierre-Christian Fink joined the Global Studies faculty in Fall 2024 and is currently teaching in the Global Commerce in Culture & Society track. His research explores how financial elites create markets that are hidden from the public but powerfully influence citizens’ economic opportunities across the globe.

Eight UVA students were selected this year to participate in the prestigious Oslo Scholars Program. The goal of the Oslo Scholars Program is to provide students the opportunity to work directly with an international human rights or democracy organization, providing them with direct hands-on experience in how their academic work can have real world impact.

Phoebe Crisman (Global Studies, Architecture) has received an award for Excellence in Education Abroad. Elizabeth Wittner (CAELC), Bonnie Gordon (Music), Fern Hauck (Family Medicine) have received an award for Collaborative Excellence in Public Service for work with local refugee communities.

Beneath Ghana’s rich soils lies a treasure the world desires––gold. The rush to unearth this precious metal has led to a host of health problems from illegal mining, or galamsey. This unregulated, small-scale mining has poisoned rivers, destroyed land, and broken communities. More than 150 students from across Grounds came forward to solve this real-world health problem in the annual Global Health Case Competition held by the Center for Global Health Equity (CGHE). The case – water pollution in Ghana, is a major environmental health problem, impacting communities across the world.

Brady Sack is a second-year medical student and was the 2024 Center for Global Health Equity (CGHE) Ram Family Foundation scholar. The Ram Family Center for Global Health Scholar Award was established to honor Dr. Bellamane M. Ram and Dr. Anjan Kumari Ram who practiced medicine in India and the United States. The award supports interdisciplinary work in communities in Southern India and is open to students from all schools across Grounds.

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.

The world seems increasingly attracted to authoritarian solutions for pressing political issues, such as climate change, ethnic violence, and economic turmoil. In the Philippines, however, the next generation is actively building the organizations, campaigns, and movements to rebuild a democratic civic sphere. Over the past year, UVA’s Democratic Futures Project (DFP) has enabled undergraduate students to support and document these efforts, most recently through the publication of Care at the Core: The Power of People in the Grassroots.

Andreja Siliunas joined the Global Studies program this fall as joint faculty with the Engagements program. A qualitative researcher, Siliunas uses archival, interview-based, and ethnographic methods to study inequality, memory politics, and nationalism in a globalizing world. In 2023, she earned her PhD in Sociology and Social Policy from Harvard University and, following that, taught in UVA’s Sociology department during the 2023-24 academic year.

In Fall 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 24 Graduate Global Research (GGR) grants, seven Center Grants for individual faculty research, and three Global Programs of Distinction (GPOD) grants.

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.

The Center for Global Inquiry + Innovation (CGII) was founded in the fall of 2013 by Jeff Legro, then Vice Provost for Global Affairs, to support global, interdisciplinary, and collaborative research. The center awarded its first grants that winter. Now, over a decade later, UVA Global reflects on CGII’s impact.

UVA’s Center for Global Health Equity has announced the recipients of the 2024 Dick & Nancy Guerrant Global Health Equity Professor Award. Professors Michaela DuBay, CCC-SLP, Ph.D. and Christopher C.