Fulbright Reality Czech

Julia Nema is an English Teaching Assistant at Gymnázium Ladislava Jaroše in Holešov, a town of 12,000 people located in the Zlín Region. This year, she teaches English to students aged 12 to 19, and in the afternoons, she hosts four English conversation clubs (three for students and one for interested teachers), and an English writing club. Julia’s parents come from Ukraine. She visited her parents’ homeland once, in 2015, and it was the time when she finally met the “family [she] only ever heard about but had never seen.” Julia further notes that, “For the first time in [her] life, [she] felt whole [and] felt Ukrainian; the culture [she] once thought was so removed from [her] took [her] in its arms and never let go.” After that summer, Julia and her parents returned back to the U.S. However, the unstable political situation, financial constraints and, most recently, the war in Ukraine, prevented Julia from visiting her family again. In 2022, Julia graduated from Villanova University ...

Jakub Mihálik je filosof. Působí v Oddělení analytické filosofie ve Filosofickém ústavu Akademie věd České republiky. Svým výzkumem v oboru filosofie mysli se pokouší přispět k pochopení povahy vědomých stavů a jejich vztahů k neuronálním procesům v mozku. V tomto akademickém roce působí jako stipendista Fulbrightova programu na New York University, kde řeší výzkumný projekt „Consciousness and the Meta-Problem of Acquaintance“. Ve „městě, které nikdy nespí“ Jakub Mihálik deset měsíců pobývá s manželkou a čtyřletým synem. NYU Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness, kde působím jako hostující badatel, je špičkové pracoviště v oboru filosofie mysli, tedy filosofie zkoumající, v sepjetí s kognitivní psychologií a neurovědou, otázky jako co to znamená mít mysl, být vědomý, přemýšlet a v jakém vztahu jsou tyto atributy k tělesným, především mozkovým procesům. Centrum vedou dva „žijící klasikové“ filosofie mysli, Ned Block a David Chalmers. Právě druhý zmíněný filosof je pro mě klíčovou in...

Audra Hamlin is a filmmaker. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, Audra is spending the current Spring semester 2023 at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, where she studies cinematography and film. Audra fell in love with making videos as a child. She now continues to fulfill her childhood dreams as a student at the legendary FAMU [Film and TV School] - "one of the top film schools in Europe known as the Hollywood of Europe for its innovative film making past..." In Audra's opinion, "Czech films are full of black humor which is reflective of the humor here, and it makes me more aware of how we use where we are from and how we go about saying something." The Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship Program is one of the U.S. State Department scholarship programs; it enables students of limited financial means to study or intern abroad in order to provide them with skills critical to U.S. national security and economic prosperity. Thi...

Spending ten months in a foreign country is always a transformative experience. Spending ten months in a small Czech town, far away from the capital, Prague, in a place where you may be the only American (or even the only foreigner or English-speaking person) is a unique cultural experience that one never forgets. Every year, Fulbright Czech Republic welcomes 30 English Teaching Assistants and places them at regional high schools of various types all over the country. Most of the Assistants are recent graduates of different U.S. universities. They want to teach English in the Czech Republic to gain international work experience, to get to know the Czech culture, and to have a year that will be unlike anything that they have ever experienced before. Seven of this year’s ETAs have decided to chronicle their Fulbright adventure by getting a tattoo with a special significance to their host town, region, or their stay in the Czech Republic. Below, you can read stories of seven of our as...