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Meet Elisabeth Maring: Fulbright scholar, professor of public health, backpacker. Learn more about her year in Varanasi, India, teaching at Mahatma Gandhi Kashi Vidyapith (MGKVP).

For those who may be unfamiliar with you and your work, can you share a little bit about yourself, your research interests at UMD, and the scope of your project?

A lifetime of dancing around the world defines the work of Maryland faculty fellow Kate Spanos (Ph.D. ’16), non-profit founder and now first-time author. She specializes in dances of resistance, which allow communities to have their voices heard in a way that transcends speech. Through her travels to Montserrat in the Caribbean, Ireland, and Brazil—she’s seen the power of these dances to resist subjugation and build community firsthand, and she’s sharing this knowledge on campus and off.

It’s graduation day. When Paulina Leder ‘23 walks across the stage, four years of late nights studying history, conversations in German, and term papers in French come to a close in a singular handshake from the dean of the College of Arts and Humanities (ARHU) and the flash of a graduation photographer’s camera. Leder has joined the ranks of other fearless alumni of one of the top 50 global universities in the world. Her first order of business? One more international exchange with her alma mater.

To Brazil, Ireland, the Caribbean, and back, ARHU’s own Kate Spanos has taken her love of dance all over the world. In 2018, she traveled to Federal University of Pernambuco on a Fulbright in Recife, Brazil, for an 8 month exploration frevo dance.

The University of Maryland has joined the Regional Scholarship and Innovation Fund (Rsif) as an International Partner Institution (IPI), where it will offer internship opportunities for visiting doctoral students to train, conduct research, and build capacity to innovate when they return to Africa.