7/1/02--Boston College Law School is pleased to announce that graduate Pauline M. Christo (’02) has been awarded a prestigious Fulbright Scholarship. Christo will use the scholarship to study refugee narratives in an effort to better understand the implications of international law.

"We're tremendously happy to hear of Pauline's accomplishment," said BC Law Dean John H. Garvey. "Winning a Fulbright is a great honor. I also think that Pauline's plan of study could be a wonderful contribution to cross-cultural understanding. She brings to it a personal history and a set of abilities that will, we expect, make this an experience that is memorable for her and helpful for the rest of us."

Christo describes her project as researching refugee narratives of people forcibly displaced from their ancestral lands as a result of the Lausanne Convention, a treaty that imposed a compulsory population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923. "In particular, I will be interviewing Greek refugees and their families, as well as examining memoirs, poetry, and song lyrics describing the refugee experience," she says. "I’m really excited to have received [a Fulbright]. It is providing me with a unique opportunity to do interdisciplinary research that combines several of my interests."

Christo goes on to explain how the idea for her project began. "I had two fortuitous meetings in college that in retrospect served as the inspiration. In September of my sophomore year, I met a Greek-American whose grandmother was born in Smyrna (now Izmir, Turkey). He would often talk about the stories she told him about her experiences as a refugee in Athens after she was forced to leave her ancestral home. Then, while I was visiting Turkey later that same year, my tour guide told me that his grandmother often reminisced about her home in Crete before "The Exchange" forced her to leave. I later learned that "The Exchange" referred to the compulsory exchange of Muslim and Christian populations between Greece and Turkey imposed by the 1923 Lausanne Convention."

But it wasn’t until after she became a BC Law student and began working with Professor Alfred Yen, Christo says, that she started to seriously consider pursuing her interest in these refugee narratives. "Although Professor Yen’s specialty, intellectual property, seems at first to have nothing to do with international law, his approach of looking at how law affects individuals and firms, often in unintended ways, inspired me to examine the Lausanne Convention from the perspective of those forced from their ancestral lands."

Fulbright Program Overview
The Fulbright Program was established in 1946, at the end of World War II, to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and other countries, through the exchange of persons, knowledge, and skills. Its primary source of funding is an annual appropriation made by the United States Department of State. Participating governments and host institutions also contribute financial support through direct cost-sharing, as well as through tuition waivers, university housing, and other benefits.

The Fulbright Program has provided more than 250,000 participants—chosen for their leadership potential—with the opportunity to observe each others’ political, economic and cultural institutions, exchange ideas and embark on joint ventures of importance to the general welfare of the world’s inhabitants. Since the establishment of the Program, 85,000 students from the United States and 146,000 students from other countries have benefited from the Fulbright experience. The U.S. Student Program awards approximately 1,000 grants annually and currently operates in over 140 countries worldwide.

Program Design
The U.S. Student Program is designed to give recent B.S./B.A. graduates, master’s and doctoral candidates, and young professionals and artists opportunities for personal development and international experience. Most grantees plan their own programs. Projects may include university coursework, independent library or field research, classes in a music conservatory or art school, special projects in the social or life sciences, or a combination. Recent projects have involved cancer research in the UK, free market development in Mauritius, women’s rights in Chile and contemporary artistic expression in India. Along with opportunities for intellectual, professional, and artistic growth, the Fulbright Program offers invaluable opportunities to meet and work with people of the host country, sharing daily life as well as professional and creative insights. The program promotes cross-cultural interaction and mutual understanding on a person-to-person basis in an atmosphere of openness, academic integrity, and intellectual freedom.

Source: http://www.iie.org