Warisha Aslam

2021 Fulbright U.S. Student Program Grantee

Hometown

Carol Stream, IL

Major

Political Science

College

College of Liberal Arts

 

Warisha Aslam joined the ranks of more than 400,000 Fulbrighters who have gone abroad to conduct research, study, or teach in one of 165 partner countries since 1946.

On the 75th anniversary of the Fulbright program, Warisha sought to examine how tolerance for migrant groups might increase in Turkey. Among her reasons for choosing this location, she notes that Turkey has a long history of welcoming immigrants and yet cultural and political unrest has frequently been a direct consequence. In collaboration with faculty at Koc University’s Migration Research Center, she will integrate interview-based analysis into a survey experiment, which she developed for her undergraduate scholarly thesis and adapted to the Turkish context.

In Turkey, Warisha will engage in the local community by volunteering at two nonprofit organizations, which focus on supporting Syrian children who reside in the Turkish refugee camps and connecting refugees to appropriate governmental resources, respectively. In addition to taking classes in Arabic calligraphy, Warisha intends to use her talents in photography to maintain a blog-journal to inform an American audience. Warisha understands not only the impact of living on new terrain, but also the diverse cultural perspectives that arise through migration. Born in Pakistan, she migrated to the United States with her family when she was thirteen years old.