As a Haida woman and a doctoral student at the University of Washington (UW), I have spent countless hours exploring the campus but I have never connected with my learning environment so profoundly as I did with my Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Xaad Kíl (Haida language) class. I am a member of the

Robyn Long was a FLAS Fellow for French in the 2021-22 academic year while completing her Master of Social Work. As part of the Social Work program, she completed a practicum with the Inuit Circumpolar Council, Canada office that involved supporting staff participating in the Arctic Council’s Sustainable Development Working Group. Her primary project focused

Caroline Humphreys is a FLAS Fellow (French) with Canadian Studies Center, a law student at the UW’s School of law, and a member of the Washington Law Review. Outside of UW, Caroline is the Special Projects Director of Arctic Encounter, an Alaska-based nonprofit organization that hosts Arctic-focused business and policy convenings. She is also a Research Associate with The Arctic

Ellen Ahlness, three-time recipient of a FLAS fellowship in the Inuit language, was awarded a doctorate in Political Science in August 2021. Her dissertation examines the political engagement of the Indigenous Permanent Participants in the Arctic Council. While the Permanent Participants received global attention in 1996 when they became the first Indigenous members of an international

Lindsey Popkin just graduated with her master’s degree from the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs in June 2021. In her final year she also studied Nuu-chah-nulth, a First Nations language spoken on Vancouver Island with funding from a Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowship through Canadian Studies. Her research focused on Indigenizing sea otter

Samantha Farquhar, 2019 FLAS Fellow in French, is working to establish studies in Canada in food security, fisheries and development. Samantha was a 2019 Foreign Language and Area Studies fellow in French through the Center while pursuing a Masters in Marine and Environmental Affairs at UW. Her research focused on Canadian community-based resource issues and

Michelle Browne, a first-generation American, has a deep commitment to immigrant communities and the laws that guide them. — As a first-generation American, I believe strongly in a fair and welcoming immigration system that recognizes the contribution immigrants make to their adopted countries. Immigrants grow our economies and infuse our communities with diversity and innovative

Adam Werle, an alum in International Studies, Japan track, now teaches Nuu-chah-nulth to Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellows. Read more in his words: — I discovered in high school that I am fascinated by languages. Before university, I studied Spanish, Japanese, and French. At the University of Washington, I took linguistics, and studied

My name is Tsudoi Wada. I am a general linguistics graduate student in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Washington. My main fields of interest are endangered and under-documented languages, language documentation and preservation, and semantics. My research is focused on the Dene language Tsek’ene, spoken in northern British Columbia, Canada. I have

This fall quarter, three UW graduate students were awarded Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships for the Inuit language: Ellen Ahlness, a doctoral candidate in political science; Elena Bell, a doctoral candidate in International Studies, and Elizabeth Wessells, a doctoral candidate in Anthropology. Ellen’s research looks at Indigenous–state relations and Arctic environmental politics and