Good heavens, already six months have passed since I am working as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and until now it has been a wonderful experience, both from an academic as a cultural point of view. Both Harvard and the person(s) I have the pleasure of working with in the FXB Center, have simply surpassed my wildest expectations.
I am working on a project whose aim is to use international human rights courts in Africa, to help women who are dying during childbirth. Harvard has given me the opportunity to meet experts from the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Bank, UN Special Rapporteurs and other leading scholars from all around the globe, who are also interested to find strategies to reduce maternal deaths. All of them have made interesting, and very useful legal and non-legal comments on my research. Thanks to all of these people and the forum and the access to research that Harvard is providing, I strongly believe that at the end of my research period here in August 2015, the strategy that I am designing or building will effectively help vulnerable women.
From a cultural point of view, I have been very lucky because some fine colleagues within the FXB Center, and especially one of the professors I am working with have transformed my stay into a true ‘North American experience’, inviting me to cultural events and home, welcome and farewell parties of scholars and family. Some days ago, I have had the joy of watching the Superbowl at a professor’s home, together with her family and neighbors. I felt really embedded in the US culture! Moreover, our team, the New England Patriots won the Superbowl: “Go, Boston, go!
Mmm, It may not always be easy to be far away from one’s loved ones, but people and staff here are doing literally everything to make you feel welcome, happy and at home, both academically as personally… and all is thanks to Fulbright, which has given me this unique and exceptional opportunity, for which I will be eternally grateful.
Dr. Clara Burbano-Herrera
Fulbright Postdoctoral Research Fellow
FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard School of Public Health and Human Rights Center, Ghent University