This April, Victoria Jones received the Fulbright/IKY PhD Research Award to do field research during the 2024-2025 academic year. Victoria’s dissertation project focuses on how the asylum process for displaced families creates barriers to education for children at the borders of Europe (Greece-Turkey maritime border) and the US (US-Mexico border). Thus, Victoria will conduct fieldwork between September 2024 and March 2025 in Greece and during March and June 2025 at the US-Mexico border.

Victoria, originally from Texas, is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Comparative and International Education Program. Victoria has vast international experience, including having lived abroad for seven years in different countries, including Italy, Colombia, England, and Spain, among others.  In 2017 and 2018, Victoria worked as a language teacher in Italy and taught in Columbia on a Fulbright ETA during 2018-2019, an experience that led her to co-found a refugee education nonprofit, ELNOR, in 2020. This international pathway and personal experiences have shaped Victoria’s research and professional interests, passionate about access to education for displaced children, education in emergency contexts, and the criminalization of asylum seekers, among many others.

Victoria doing research in research with ELNOR in Greece in 2021 

As part of her Ph.D. experience, Victoria has worked on different research projects with her advisor, Professor Garnett Russell, including “The Contexts of Reception and Access to Education: Perspective of Diverse Organizations and Newcomer Families in New York City” or “Education for Transitional Justice, Reconciliation and Peacebuilding: The Case of Colombia”. In her own words, “I am grateful for my work with my advisor in these different projects, which have helped me sharpen my research skills and leverage my prior knowledge towards conducting my dissertation project.”

Victoria Jones presenting her research on asylum seekers and access to education at CIES 2024

Again, we congratulate Victoria for obtaining the Fulbright/IKY PhD Research Award and are excited to see her work developing in the next academic year.