Dr. Joseph Sankoh approved for Fulbright

Dr. Joseph Sankoh

Dr. Joseph Sankoh, Associate Professor of Political Science, has been approved for the Senior Specialist Fulbright Award Roster for overseas exchange from the U.S. Council for International Exchange of Scholars (CIES). The award will allow him to undertake short term collaborative projects with various universities overseas during the next five years. Dr. Sankoh plans to travel to Poland, Botswana, Rwanda, and Indonesia to share his expertise on service learning while conducting research in comparative genocide, among other areas. Last summer, Dr. Sankoh traveled to Poland to help initiate a service learning component focused on Jewish cemetery preservation in Przemysl, Poland, for Daemen's Polish Studies program (outlined in this blog post from July 2013). The Fulbright program is a prestigious academic award that provides funding for exchange programs for faculty, professionals, and students to undertake international study, research, and teaching. The Fulbright Senior Specialist Award program provides short-term consultation and collaboration opportunities (two to six weeks) for partnerships between scholars in the United States and their counterparts in other countries on areas such as curriculum, program development, and faculty development, as well as institutional planning, lectures, workshops, and research.

The Senior Specialist Fulbright Award will build upon Dr. Sankoh's academic training and teaching expertise in the areas of Service Learning (SL), globalization, and the African diaspora, and will enable him to extend research interests addressing refugee and immigrant communities and in comparative genocide. Dr. Sankoh was instrumental in developing the Service Learning (SL) program at Daemen and has taught many SL courses that bring Daemen students into communities and neighborhoods in the Buffalo area. His Service Learning for Refugee Studies course provides Daemen students the opportunity to examine issues facing refugees from a global perspective, with placements that allow Daemen students to work with refugee communities in the Buffalo region. Students learn from the immigrant and refugee groups while also providing them with assistance. This course has been emulated by other departments at Daemen and is a cornerstone of a new Refugee Studies proposal that Dr. Sankoh is developing. Dr. Sankoh has also collaborated on such efforts as last summer's panel discussion (among refugees) for World Refugee Day, discussed at his blog post from July 2013.

Congratulations, Joe!