Briane Turley, adjunct associate professor of history in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, has been awarded a research fellowship for the 2019-2020 academic year at the Corvinus Institute for Advanced Studies in Budapest, Hungary.
The CIAS Fellowship is a globally-competitive award open to scholars engaged in research and in the teaching of Central Europe Studies in a global context. Applicants were peer-reviewed by a panel of experts from the applicant’s given field, including a member of the Corvinus University academic faculty and an internationally-respected expert from another institution.
Turley’s work focuses on Hungarian laborers and their families in the coalfields of southern West Virginia where, in communities like Gary, they were a dominant labor force in the coal-mining industry. His research examines Hungarian migration patterns to and from the US and the challenges families encountered such as the common yet illegal practice of debt servitude, or peonage.
Turley is the recipient of four Fulbright awards, all of which he served at universities in Budapest and Szeged, Hungary and at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. During the current semester, he returned to the University of Szeged where he taught an undergraduate course “A History of American Incarceration” in the English and American Studies Institute. He resides in Welch, with his wife, Ann, a WVU alumna who directs the community’s new Caffrey Arts and Cultural Center.
CIAS provides research fellowships for scholars with outstanding credentials. The Center’s fundamental goal is to create an inspiring and creative intellectual community. Fellowships are granted in a process based on thematic calls for applications that contribute to CIAS’ intellectual profile within its Central European context.