Baruch College Associate Professor Sarah Bishop Earns Fulbright Scholar Grant

May 1, 2020

Sarah Bishop, PhD, from the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences, is a recipient of a Fulbright U.S. Scholar grant, which will help support her research examining the economic, personal, and social challenges facing individuals who formerly migrated to the United States.

With this Fulbright award, Professor Bishop will interview asylum seekers sent back to El Salvador and Guatemala. She is looking to understand how communication and culture affect the asylum process, and how policy and community interventions could better protect migrants during and after the asylum process. Bishop’s grant begins in January 2021 and will last five months.

“I’m honored to be a recipient,” Bishop stated. “As soon as I got the news, I began having trouble concentrating on anything else.”

At Baruch, Bishop teaches a class on communication and migration in the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences and instructs a course on global communication for the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs.

Bishop’s Research: “Communication and Culture in the Search for Asylum”

To complete her research, “Communication and Culture in the Search for Asylum,” Bishop will collaborate with a scholar from Universidad Tecnológica de El Salvador to interview individuals denied asylum in the U.S. She will visit non-profit organizations in El Salvador and Guatemala to “learn about the challenges they face as they work to facilitate re-integration.”

Ultimately, Bishop plans to use the research she conducts during the Fulbright grant to write her third book that will pair the Salvadorian and Guatemalan returnees’ reflections with those of the asylum seekers she has already interviewed in New York who were granted asylum or are awaiting a decision in their case.

In addition to her work with asylum seekers, Bishop will lead a week-long seminar for international human rights practitioners with a nonprofit organization in El Salvador called Cristosal. Bishop will guide these practitioners in a conversation about some of the common challenges human rights advocates face, including historical dialogue about the past, and facilitating conversations between victims and perpetrators of violence about transitional justice.

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