WORCESTER—Two Clark University professors will spend part of next year abroad as recipients of Fulbright U.S. Scholar Awards for 2025-26, the university announced.
Associate Professor Jie Park, of Clark’s Education Department, received a Fulbright Award to South Korea for spring 2026. Her project, Poetry translation and critical English language teaching, will include practice-based seminars and workshops for graduate students and English language educators at Korea University and Sogang University, using the Poetry Inside Out (PIO) program.
“In PIO, translation is an interpretive and creative act that facilitates language acquisition and critical literacy,” said Park in the announcement. She also plans to conduct a qualitative study on how educators in South Korea implement translation and critical pedagogies in their classrooms.
“This Fulbright award allows me to join a network of scholars and practitioners who approach English education in a global context and supports me to refine a theory of translation as a critical literacy practice – a framework that I’ve written about, but only from a U.S. centric perspective,” Park wrote. “I hope to establish relationships of reciprocity and knowledge generation where I can learn, contribute, and connect people, ideas, and institutions.”
Park said she looks forward to the personal meaning of the experience. “I am looking forward to the challenges and rewards of living, working, and learning in South Korea — a country where I spent my childhood,” she wrote.
Michael Bamberg, professor in the Frances L. Hiatt School of Psychology, received a Fulbright to Poland to serve as a Distinguished Scholar in Humanities and Social Sciences at Adam Mickiewicz University (AMU) from February to June 2026.
Bamberg will collaborate on a narrative, storytelling, identity and change project with Joanna Pawelczyk, dean of AMU’s Faculty of English; teach his course Qualitative Theory & Analysis to graduate students; and help establish a Qualitative Lab in Discourse and Narrative Analytics.
This will be Bamberg’s second Fulbright to AMU. In spring 2020, he had just arrived in Poland when Fulbright participants were called back due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I was particularly thrilled, since this is my second Fulbright award,” he said in a statement. “I wasn’t imagining that this was achievable. Receiving the Fulbright Award for a second time, coinciding with the point of 40 years of service to Clark University, is highly gratifying – indicating something like a high point of my scholarly activities – being recognized nationally as well as internationally.”
Bamberg said his previous connections at AMU will strengthen the upcoming project. “Having had the initial contact with students and colleagues at AMU in 2020, particularly with my host Professor Pawelczyk, I feel that our joint project has matured in ways to lead to an even more successful collaboration,” he wrote.
He also noted a personal goal for his return: “In my first days in Poland in 2020, during our introductory meeting in Torun, it became embarrassingly apparent that I was one of the few [Fulbrighters] who wasn’t able to count in Polish. This needs to change.”
The Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and offers opportunities for faculty, researchers, and professionals to teach and conduct research abroad. More than 40 Clark faculty scholars have previously received the award.
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