Universitetsjobbs blogg

Prestigious grant creates unofficial ambassadors

The Fulbright Commission is an educational exchange program between the governments of United States and Sweden that issues grants for Swedes and Americans in postdoc research and graduate studies.

Fulbright was founded in the US in 1946  but the Program started in Sweden in 1952.

Elizabeth Briggs has been the Fulbright Program Officer for three years and explains that the Commission is sponsored by both governments and accepts 10 graduate students from the US to study in Sweden each year.
- The US students have to have an affiliation with a  university when applying, and we have a Bi-national board that selects about 10-15 Swedes who receive grants for a university stay in the US, says Elizabeth.

The Commission help s the Swedish students with funding, since it is expensive to study in the US and they also help negotiate  cost reduction from the university fees. For their main Graduate Student Program they accept students from all fields of study, except medicine (with the exception of public health and medical research), dentistry or veterinary medicine.

Fulbright is a prestigious program in the US, and those who receive Fulbright
grants are expected   to demonstrate outstanding academic performance and actively contribute to the promotion of the mutual understanding as unofficial "ambassadors" of their country, says Elizabeth Briggs.
- We have had 4 Nobel laureates among our students, including Hannes Alfvén and Bengt Samuelsson. Other grantees are former Swedish Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson and Hans Blix,  Former Chief UN Weapons Inspector.

Fulbright is currently announcing grant opportunities

Author: Carolina Löfstrand
Published: 2010-12-02