Elizabeth Koselka receives a Fulbright U.S. Scholar fellowship 

Northwestern University graduate student has received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar fellowship from the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. The prestigious fellowship provides unique opportunities for scholars to teach and conduct research abroad, forge new relationships and contribute to finding solutions to challenges both local and global.

Koselka, a doctoral candidate in the department of anthropology, will spend six months in Alicante, Spain, studying the role of stress and social disruption on people’s eating habits and health outcomes.

Fulbright award recipients are chosen for their academic merit and leadership potential.

Koselka recently defended her dissertation and will graduate this summer. A biological anthropologist, her research centers on food and eating to elucidate social, historical and political forces that perpetuate health inequity in high-resource settings, mainly Spain and the U.S. Koselka focuses on how people eat after two periods of formidable change (the COVID-19 pandemic and international migration to Spain).

In Spain, Koselka will conduct interviews and collect in-person qualitative insights that can enrich the study she established in 2021 with colleagues at the University of Alicante. Her project focuses on understanding the social dynamics that drive changes to eating habits and migration-related stress for two generations of people who moved to Alicante from countries in Latin America.

“It’s a tremendous honor to be selected and have the opportunity to continue my work in Alicante, Spain,” Koselka said. “To protect health and safety during the COVID-19 pandemic, we used fully remote methods. Now I will be able to get firsthand perspective and focus on qualitative social contexts.”