The Department of History has been selected to host Anna Fenyvesi, a Fulbright Research Scholar from Hungary who will study the heritage of Appalachian Hungarians, mostly those who settled in the region from 1880 until 1924.
Fenyvesi was selected from a large pool of applicants by the Hungarian Fulbright Commission in Budapest and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.
Director of the English and American Studies Institute at the University of Szeged, she is a sociolinguistics expert with an interest in the Hungarian language use of American Hungarians, bilingualism and digital language use.
She will be conducting interviews and performing a wide array of fieldwork activities in the once-active coalfield communities of West Virginia, southwest Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, Kentucky and southwestern Virginia.
The Fulbright Scholars Program brings visiting scholars from abroad to United States colleges and universities, helping the institutions internationalize their curricula, campuses and surrounding communities while diversifying the educational experiences of their students, faculty, staff and stakeholders.
Since 2005, West Virginia has enjoyed a vibrant student and faculty exchange relationship with the University of Szeged and has been awarded multiple Fulbright grants for faculty who teach and do research at Szeged.