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Dr. Nicole Files-Thompson’s visit to the University of the West Indies will focus on intercultural communication and tourism studies
LINCOLN UNIVERSITY, Pa. – Dr. Nicole Files-Thompson has received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award to Jamaica to teach and conduct research in intercultural communication and tourism studies, according to the U.S. Department of State and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.
Dr. Nicole Files-Thompson, winner of a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award, will begin teaching and research at the University of West Indies in January 2020. (Courtesy photo).
Beginning in January 2020, Files-Thompson will teach and research at the University of the West Indies Mona and Western Jamaica campuses as part of the participatory action project “Race, Culture, Sustainability and New Media: Implications for Applied Digital Communication and the Informal and Sharing Tourism Economies in Jamaica.”
“This Fulbright is especially significant because it will allow me to teach, learn, and grow in a country that I have come to love and consider my second home,” said Files-Thompson, who is chairwoman of the Department of Mass Communications. “I know personally that tourism can represent a site of empowerment and cultural awareness, and so, being able to continue to study the impact of tourism from an African diasporic perspective is incredibly gratifying.”
Files-Thompson said she will use the Fulbright to build upon efforts started last year to open up pathways for Lincoln students to engage the African Diaspora. In summer 2018, she took 18 Lincoln students to Jamaica on a faculty-led study abroad.
“I watched every one of them grow before my eyes,” said Files-Thompson.
While on the Fulbright, she will work to develop formal exchanges between Lincoln and West Indies students through study abroad and hybrid courses. She expressed appreciation to Dr. Emmanuel Babatunde and Dr. J. Kenneth Van Dover for their mentorship through this process.
Files-Thompson has developed and taught 25 courses across the communications discipline, delivered numerous lectures and conference presentations, and most values her work in undergraduate research, study abroad, and pathways to graduate school for students of color. She holds leadership positions in the National Communications Association (NCA) and the Eastern Communications Association (ECA). Her most recent publications can be found in the journals Critical Studies in Media Communication and Women & Language.
As a teacher-scholar, her research engages the theory, practice, and epistemology of marginalized groups through interdisciplinary paradigms and the scholarship of teaching and learning. She focuses on constituting, touring, and empowering marginalized identities, via the critical questions: What constitutes marginalized identities? How do spaces negotiate marginalized identities? How are marginalized identities empowered/self-empowered?
Files-Thompson is one of over 800 U.S. citizens who will teach, conduct research, and/or provide expertise abroad for the 2019-2020 academic year through the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program. Recipients of Fulbright awards are selected on the basis of academic and professional achievement, as well as record of service and demonstrated leadership in their respective fields.
The Fulbright Program is the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program and is designed to build lasting connections between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. The Fulbright Program is funded through an annual appropriation made by the U.S. Congress to the U.S. Department of State. Participating governments, host institutions, corporations, and foundations around the world also provide direct and indirect support to the Program, which operates in over 160 countries worldwide.
Lincoln University’s Mission
Lincoln University, the nation’s first degree-granting Historically Black College and University (HBCU), educates and empowers students to lead their communities and change the world.
It does so by providing a rigorous liberal arts education featuring active and collaborative learning; integrating academic and co-curricular programs with the University’s distinctive legacy of global engagement, social responsibility and leadership development; and cultivating the character, values and standards of excellence needed to enable students to become responsible citizens of a global community.
Article by Shelley Mix, Communications & Public Relations
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