Alumni Profiles

Professor Valerie M. Hudson, PhD Distinguished Chair

Valerie M. Hudson is Professor and George H.W. Bush Chair in The George H.W. Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, where she directs the Program on Women, Peace, and Security. An expert on international security and foreign policy analysis, Dr. Valerie M. Hudson received her PhD in political science at The Ohio State University and came to Texas A&M University from a senior faculty position at Brigham Young University. In 2009, Foreign Policy named her one of the top 100 Most Influential Global Thinkers. Her co-authored book, Bare Branches: Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population, and the research it presents, received major attention from the media with coverage in theWall Street Journal,New York Times,Financial Times, Washington Post,BBC,CNN, and numerous other outlets. The book also received two national book awards. Her co-authored bookSex and World Peace, published by Columbia University Press, was named by Gloria Steinem as one of the top three books on her reading list. Her most recent book, with Patricia Leidl, isThe Hillary Doctrine: Sex and American Foreign Policy, published in June 2015. Hudson was also recently named a Distinguished Scholar of Foreign Policy Analysis by the International Studies Association.

Dr. Hudson has developed a nation-by-nation database on women (http://womanstats.org) that triggered both academic and policy interest (the latter includes its use by both the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and various agencies of the United Nations). Using this data, Hudson and her co-principal investigators from The WomanStats Project have published a wide variety of empirical work linking the security of women to the security of states, with research appearing in International Security, the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Peace Research, Political Psychology, and Politics and Gender.

Throughout her career, Dr. Hudson has demonstrated a strong commitment to collaboration with other scholars both in her own field and in other disciplines, and received significant research grants, including grants from the US Department of Defense’s Minerva Initiative and the National Science Foundation, to support her work in international affairs. Her research and teaching experience is also complemented by three major teaching awards and numerous research awards, and she has recently been awarded an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship. Hudson served as vice president of the International Studies Association for 2011-2012. She is a founding editorial board member of Foreign Policy Analysis, and also serves on the editorial boards of Politics and Gender and The American Political Science Review.

Dr. Hudson hopes to spend her time in Australia researching the implementation of UNSCR 1325 by the Australian government and military through its National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security, as well as developing a more in-depth understanding of the field of Foreign Policy Analysis as it has evolved in Australia. She is looking forward to meeting scholars throughout Australia that have similar interests. Her family will accompany her, and they are keen to see and learn as much about “Oz” as possible.

Professor Jolyon Ford Senior Scholars

Jolyon works on the regulation of responsible business and financial activity. Before re-joining the Australian National University law school in mid-2015, he worked in range of sectors including the federal public service, an intergovernmental organisation, academia, civil society, the private sector and a think-tank. He holds law degrees from the University of KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa), Cambridge, and the ANU. Born and raised in Zimbabwe, he became an Australian citizen in 2010.

Jolyon will use his Fulbright award to develop sustained research collaboration and networks with scholars and practitioners around the Centre for Responsible Business at the University of California, Berkeley. The focus of this work is comparative Australian-US perspectives on building effective models for regulating how corporations (and financial institutions) show transparently that they are managing the risk that their global supply chains may potentially contribute to patterns of forced labour and human trafficking (‘modern slavery’).

Dr Kristine M. Larson Senior Scholars

Kristine is an emeritus professor of aerospace engineering sciences at the University of Colorado. Her research is centered on using GPS signals to study a variety of Earth processes such as ground deformation during earthquakes, plate tectonic motions, snow accumulation, and ocean tides. She will spend her Fulbright Scholarship at the Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences at the University of Tasmania. She is particularly interested in working with Australian scientists on making new GPS measurements in Antarctica. 

Kristine’s goal during this visit to Australia is to help establish a center of excellence for using GPS signals for environmental applications. 

Anthony McLeod Senior Scholars

“[This] work will draw on 130 years of exchanges on water management between the U.S. and Australia and will seek to inform future policy prescriptions in both countries.”

Tony McLeod is a General Manager at the Murray Darling Basin Authority in Canberra, having completed his PhD at the University of Melbourne, specialising in water resource management. He will study at the Getches- Wilkinson Centre for Natural Resources, Energy and the Environment at the University of Colorado Boulder, in Boulder, from August to December 2014.

He will specifically focus on the shared water management challenges between the Colorado and Murray Darling river basins, including institutional form, climate change and the involvement of Indigenous people in water management.

“I see my project as usefully contributing to the issue of water management in large river basins in arid and semi-arid environments with complex governance arrangements and creating ongoing collaboration. My work will draw on 130 years of exchanges on water management between the U.S. and Australia and will seek to inform future policy prescriptions in both countries.”

Dr Stephan Frühling Professional Scholars

Stephan is an Associate Professor in the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University.

As the Fulbright Professional Scholar in Australia-U.S. Alliance Studies, based at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, Stephan will examine why both countries have created fewer permanent arrangements to implement their treaty commitments than is the case in other U.S. alliances.  He will examine, through interviews in Canberra and Washington, whether this will remain sustainable as strategic pressures in the Asia-Pacific increase, and make recommendations on how Australia and the United States could improve the political-military management of closer alliance cooperation through an alliance strategic concept, integrated staff or new command arrangements.

Mark Putland Professional Scholars

Mark graduated from Melbourne University Medical School in 1998 and became a Fellow of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine in 2007. His emergency medicine training was predominantly completed at The Western Hospital Footscray, in Melbourne’s western suburbs. He also spent time at The Royal Children’s Hospital, The Alfred Hospital and with Careflight Queensland. For the past seven years he has been an emergency physician at Bendigo Health in central Victoria and has shared the role of Co-Director of Emergency Medicine Training there for the past four years. In that time he has also worked part-time for the state critical care retrieval service coordinating and carrying out the retrieval of critically ill patients from rural areas to the city and in private and public urban emergency departments.

Mark is interested in the way well constructed systems allow talented people to do extraordinary things. Working as a director of training he has been passionate about building an educational environment at Bendigo to best bring out the talents of his trainees. Working in public and private, rural and urban EDs and for the state retrieval coordination service he has developed a broader interest in health care systems and the way they can be structured to make the most of the talents and resources available. He is particularly passionate about building capacity in rural and regional areas, having been part of a team that has built a successful and highly functioning emergency department and sought-after medical training hub in a hospital that only recently struggled to find medical staff year by year.

Mark will travel to several US states to examine the ways in which the concept of a “model trauma system” has been implemented to suit local needs. He will focus on identifying the features which are successful in some jurisdictions but absent in others.  In this way he will gain a perspective that can inform the further evolution of Victoria’s very successful trauma system. He hopes to bring back knowledge that could be applied in other Australian states and in other countries that are looking to develop their emergency care systems. Following his research term in the US, Mark will take up a sabbatical position at the National Trauma Research Institute at The Alfred Hospital in Melbourne where he aims to consolidate his work on the project.

Louise Allen Postdoctoral Scholars

Louise is a final year PhD candidate at Monash University. After working as a clinical dietitian for a number of years in both Australia and England, she pursued a PhD exploring the impacts of continuing professional development in the health professions. Continuing professional development is the backbone of lifelong learning for health professionals and aims to ultimately ensure optimal patient care and safety. However, in the current climate where doctors are increasingly time poor continuing professional development often becomes a checkbox activity. As a Fulbright Scholar, Louise will explore the value of continuing professional development that medical professionals are required to do. This is important as without doing this there is potential for continuing professional development funding to be allocated to programs that are not meeting medical professionals needs, that are not enhancing their personal and professional development, and that ultimately are not improving healthcare of patients. 

Margit Bowler Postgraduate Students

“Although Warlpiri is one of the most widely spoken Australian Aboriginal languages it, like many Indigenous languages, is at a high risk of language extinction.”

Ms Margit Bowler, a recent graduate from Reed College, has won a Fulbright Postgraduate Scholarship to come to the Australian National University to study some aspects of Warlpiri, which is an Australian Indigenous language.

“Several unusual linguistic properties of Warlpiri pose challenges to traditionally accepted linguistic theories,” Margit said. “To date, there is still no agreement within the linguistic community on a single analysis of Warlpiri.”

Margit will research the syntax and semantics of sentences in Warlpiri with respect to quantifiers, which are words such as “each” and “all”.

“Warlpiri belongs to a very small subset of “non-configurational” languages that potentially do not possess a hierarchical internal structure,” Margit said.

“Furthermore, the words in a Warlpiri sentence can occur in almost any order. It is unclear what effect these features have on how quantifiers are interpreted in the language.”

Margit will supplement her research by attending courses at the Australian National University, through a mentorship under Dr. Jane Simpson at ANU and she will also conduct fieldwork in the Northern Territory within communities that have a significant Warlpiri speaking population.

Margit has a BA in linguistics from Reed College. She has won various awards and prizes including commendations in scholastic excellence from Reed, a National Science Foundation REU grant to complete an internship at the Oregon Health & Science University’s Center for Spoken Language Understanding in Beaverton, Oregon and a North Oregon Coast scholarship, and she has been a Rotary exchange student in Austria. She will enter a PhD program in linguistics at UCLA, with a Chancellor’s Fellowship, upon completion of her Fulbright. In her spare time she enjoys traditional Scandinavian dance and is a keen musician, playing the violin and Scottish and Cape Breton fiddle.

Steven Burroughs Postgraduate Students

“Malaria is one of the most disruptive diseases on the planet, affecting almost a billion people worldwide and killing over 700,000 every year. The extent and impact of this crippling disease is believed to be a significant contributor to economic and political instability in the Third World.”

Mr Steven Burroughs is a recent graduate of The United States Military Academy. Through his Fulbright he will pursue a Masters in International Public Health at the University of Queensland. His particular area of interest is malaria.

“Southeast Asia is known as the world’s hotspot for drug resistant strains of Plasmodium, the group of organisms responsible for malaria, and Australia stands at the forefront of the battle to quickly identify, isolate, and track the spread of these strains,” Mr Burroughs said.

“It leads the world in these efforts as it is literally on the frontlines, but unlike other nations who primarily track and study malaria, Australia has embarked on an effort to eradicate malaria.”

“Australia is in a unique position as it is a developed Western nation that has dealt with and successfully eradicated malaria within its borders despite being neighbors with countries where malaria remains endemic.”

Steven plans to plan to learn as much as possible from Australia about what actions the United States could take to effectively contribute resources to the campaign to eradicate malaria.

“As a future Army officer, I hope to bring back the policies and techniques used successfully by our Australian counterparts and applying these procedures to our government’s operations in malaria stricken countries. If the U.S. gains an increased understanding of operating in malaria endemic environments, it can control the disease more effectively and provide aid more efficiently, thus saving lives. The experience with malarial control policy cannot be mimicked anywhere else, as no other country has been as active and as successful as Australia has been in controlling malaria at an international level,” Mr Burroughs said.

Steven has a B.S. in Life Sciences and Psychology from The United States Military Academy. He also is a member of the Gamma Sigma Epsilon (Chemistry Honor Society) and the Phi Kappa Phi (All-Discipline Honor Society). In his free time he enjoys orienteering, is a member of the Catholic Catechists and the American Chemical Society and he has worked with Big Brothers Big Sisters.

Sasha Purcell Postgraduate Students

Sasha is a Lawyer and delegate for the United Nations Association of Australia-Qld Division. She is passionate about advocating for the rights of marginalised and isolated communities. As a Torres Strait Islander Sasha has a particular interest in the preservation and advancement of Indigenous human rights.

Sasha has practiced in the area of foreign affairs, Police Prosecutions (criminal and domestic violence law) and child Protection litigation and currently works as a researcher in Indigenous and social and criminal justice affairs. Sasha holds dual qualifications in Law and International Relations. As a Fulbright Scholar, Sasha hopes to study a Master of Laws specialising in international law, human rights and environmental law. Her aim is to understand the intersection of human rights law with regard to preventing and remedying crimes perpetrated against marginalised communities. Upon completion of the LLM program Sasha’s intention is to complete her PhD focusing on research relating to climate change and patterns of gendered violence whilst continuing to advocate at the United Nations.

Lily Wang Postgraduate Students

Lily is a PhD candidate at the Australian National University. She studies molecular dynamics, a method that uses computers to simulate the movement of molecules over time. Although molecular dynamics simulations are powerful tools in the drug discovery pipeline, their applicability is limited by the inaccuracy of force fields: the algorithms used to calculate the energy associated with the particles.

With the Fulbright Future Scholarship, Lily will visit University of California, Irvine to work with Professor David Mobley’s group and the Open Force Field consortium to contribute to a new generation of force fields. These new force fields are developed to be accurate, flexible, open-source, and frequently updated to keep up with the fast pace of computational chemistry. When she returns, she will continue the international collaboration and share this experience and expertise in force field development with the Australian research community. Improving the performance of computational simulations will greatly increase the efficiency of pharmaceutical research.

Helen Xiao He Zhang Postgraduate Students

Helen is a Legal Officer in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). She served as Second Secretary (Political/Economic) and Vice-Consul at the Australian Embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel, from 2015-2018. During her diplomatic posting, Helen reported on international security issues such as the Syrian war, ISIS, foreign fighters, and the Iran nuclear deal. Helen also spearheaded the innovative ‘Ozraeli’ campaign to promote Australia in Israel through digital diplomacy. Helen completed her undergraduate studies at the Australian National University, and practiced commercial law in China before joining DFAT.

Helen will undertake a Mid-Career Master’s degree in Public Administration at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government (HKS) in 2019 as a Fulbright Anne Wexler Scholar. At HKS, she will build on her expertise in international security and deepen her understanding of challenges facing democracies and the liberal international order. Helen plans to use her HKS experience to help shape Australia’s foreign policy.