Henry Milander
About
Henry Milander is a recipient of the Summer 2015, Summer 2016 and Summer 2017 Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship. The award provides undergraduate, graduate, and professional school students with financial support to develop fluency in less commonly taught languages (LCTLs) and expertise in the regions in which these languages are spoken. Every year the Center for Global Studies awards between 12-15 fellowships to UW students. Click here to learn more.
I am a third-year undergraduate candidate in Business Administration (Finance), International Studies (Political Economy) and Near Eastern Languages and Civilization (Arabic). My academic work focuses on understanding how corporations and micro-finance organizations, economic integration, and government programs, can help effect economic development in the Arab world, particularly in countries with resident refugee populations.
The summer FLAS award enabled me to not only continue my formal Modern Standard Arabic curriculum, but also engage with Morocco’s diversity in relation to the rest of the Arab world and Europe, especially in regards to its political relations, economic conditions, and zeitgeist. The experiences I had and the mentoring I received from teachers, colleagues, and professionals, made me realize that in order to conduct research at the graduate level or work with development agencies, it is best I choose a single country or geographic region to focus on. Going forward, I would like this region to be the Levant, a place FLAS enabled me to study last summer, and where I hope to continue my studies in advanced Arabic and the Jordanian dialect, Ammiya. With that, I could effectively research and work professionally in the development field, and later apply those experiences and expertise in academia or government work.