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(WSU | CONTRIBUTED PHOTO) Graham High School graduate Sydney Smith has traveled across the world for her studies and will continue that research aboard after receiving the Fulbright award.
After graduating in 2016 from Graham High School, Sydney Smith has been on a path which has taken her across the globe and her international studies will continue after receiving a Fulbright research award.
The Fulbright U.S. Student Program awards one-year study abroad grants for seniors, recent graduates and graduate students who perform an individually designed study or research project.
The goal of the Fullbright is to expand the student perspective through academic and professional advancement as well as cross-cultural dialogue.
Smith received her Bachelor of Arts in international studies from Arcadia University in Glenside, Pennsylvania, and her Master of Science in international relations from the University of Glasgow in Scotland.
She started at Washington State University in 2021 and has been working for four years on her doctorate. Smith’s Fulbright award is based on her research with her WSU mentor Amy Mazur in gender inequality and gender-based violence.
The Fulbright research will become part of her dissertation and build off work with Mazur.
“For Fulbright, I will be researching the Istanbul Convention, which is the Council of Europe convention to eliminate violence against women and domestic violence,” Smith said. “It is an international treaty that is the top-tier sort of international treaty that has all these provisions outlined in it.”
Provisions of the treaty include policies such as having telephone help lines for victims of domestic violence and gender-based violence in their country as well as educational awareness raising programs.
Smith said she will be researching how the treaty has been implemented in different countries and how it engages at an international, national and local level.
“(I’m researching that these) policies are put in place (and) that they're actively being effectively implemented so that you know people have these protections and that they can use these resources in hopes that they can eliminate the issue of domestic violence and gender-based violence, but also make the society more safe and free for people to engage with them,” she said.
Her mentors for the research will be Marjeta Sinko at the University of Zagreb, Croatia, along with Roman Kuhar and Milica Antic Gaber at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Her research will focus on how different levels of government, such as international, national and local, work together to shape and carry out gender equality policies. This research will explore public policy, social movements and will develop a broad understanding of feminist theory.
“I think it's very important to look at the issue of gender-based violence and domestic violence because it's not just this international issue that happens somewhere else. It's an issue that affects all communities around the world, from big cities to small towns,” Smith said. “People are constantly being subjected to it and so it needs to be researched and addressed in how we can combat it.”
Smith said her encouragement for traveling for school came from a trip in eighth grade at Graham Junior High School to New York and Washington D.C. and later a Costa Rica trip at Graham High School.
“Since then I've just really kept doing it,” she said. “Being abroad and just engaging with other people is really enlightening, because it just shows us how more like we are than I think we are in some way.”
Smith’s ultimate goal is to earn her Ph.D., teach and research and do some policy work.
“While I like doing all this research and giving back to the world in the small way that I can, I really like teaching,” she said. “I think the highlight of this past year was actually I got to teach my own class for the first time. Just engaging with students and allowing them to process these ideas in ways they may not be able to, or may not have thought of before, has been very fulfilling for me.”
Smith said she is one of many Graham alumni who have found success after high school.
“I'm very proud of my roots coming from Graham. I'm very supportive of the community that I have there,” she said. “We have so many cool graduates doing so many things across the board, like people who are still in Graham who are opening up their own businesses. I think that's so awesome.”
