HPU Professor Receives Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program Award

The U.S. Department of State and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board announced that Andrea Malji, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of International Studies, has received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award to India. Malji will research at the University of Kerala – planning for 2022 – as part of a project to study how Hindus and Muslims form inter-religious networks at the neighborhood level.  

The goal of Malji’s project is to understand the underlying mechanism that promotes inter-religious peace and trust-building. She will travel throughout the state of Kerala in southern India, conducting community-level surveys to know how inter-communal trust and networks are built.

“My hope is that the findings can help promote policy solutions that nurture peace among historically contentious groups,” Malji said. 

Her research focuses on nationalism, religion, and political violence with a regional specialization in South Asia.  Her research and teaching have helped secure external funding from the NEH and International Center on Nonviolent Conflict. 

Malji’s work has been featured in numerous outlets, including forthcoming pieces in Cambridge University Press Elements, Terrorism and Political Violence, Education about Asia, PS Political Science & Politics, and the Journal of Religion and Violence. Her research on Buddhist nationalism in Sri Lanka and Myanmar was recently published in 9dashline (How Buddhist nationalism is shaping Sri Lanka’s domestic and foreign policy — 9DASHLINE) and the Berkley Center for Religion at Georgetown University (A Coup Can’t Destroy an Ideology: The Future of Buddhist Nationalism in Myanmar (georgetown.edu)).