Education Culture and Society General

MSU Texas history professor to teach in Croatia as part of Fulbright program

Kathy Floyd
05 September 2024
3 min read

John Ashbrook, associate professor of history at Midwestern State University, has received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award in history from the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.

Ashbrook received a teaching/research grant and will teach at the University of Zagreb in Zagreb, Croatia, during the spring 2025 semester. He will finish research for the Croatian chapter of his book project European Union Expansion into Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe: Accommodation and Euroscepticism, which is a critical examination of the expansion of the European Union into Eastern Europe and the Balkans.

Since part of his Fulbright award includes teaching a course, Ashbrook says he will act as a conduit for the exchange of teaching ideas and methodologies between MSU Texas and the University of Zagreb. “I am honored to have been selected as a Fulbright Scholar to Croatia. On my return, I plan to relate my experience to MSU Texas students and faculty and to encourage them to apply for their own Fulbright grants, hopefully in areas beyond the well-traversed confines of Western Europe.”

Ashbrook’s book will examine the distrust of the European Union among Croats and other Central and Eastern Europeans in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. His theory is that the EU is seen by a significant proportion of Eastern Europeans as an exclusively Western European institution, which promotes its own goals and cosmopolitan culture and disdains the national cultures of its neighbors east and south of the Elbe and Danube rivers. “There are still lingering prejudices against the people of the wider region by the bureaucrats in Brussels, and this can be seen in the institution’s relationships with the newer members of the EU,” Ashbrook said.

Ashbrook joined the Department of History at MSU Texas in 2019. He specializes in Eastern European studies with special interests in neo-imperialism, identity politics, borderland studies, and institutional history. He is the author of Buying and Selling the Istrian Goat: Istrian Regionalism, Croatian Nationalism and EU Enlargement, Regional and Federalism Series. In addition to his current book on the European Union expansion, he is

working on The War of the Moles: Tunneling and the Underground War in World War I. His work has also been published in journals such as Small Wars & Insurgencies; East European Quarterly; and East European Politics and Societies.

Fulbright U.S. Scholars are faculty, researchers, administrators, and established professionals teaching or conducting research in affiliation with institutes abroad. Upon returning to their home countries, institutions, labs, and classrooms, they share their stories and often become active supporters of international exchange, inviting foreign scholars to campus and encouraging colleagues and students to go abroad.

About the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program

Since 1946, the Fulbright Program has provided over 400,000 talented and accomplished students, scholars, teachers, artists, and professionals of all backgrounds with the opportunity to study, teach, and conduct research abroad. Fulbrighters exchange ideas, build people-to-people connections, and work to address complex global challenges. Notable Fulbrighters include 62 Nobel Laureates, 90 Pulitzer Prize winners, 80 MacArthur Fellows, 41 heads of state or government, and thousands of leaders across the private, public, and non-profit sectors.

Over 800 individuals teach or conduct research abroad through the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program annually. In addition, more than 2,000 Fulbright U.S. Student Program participants — recent college graduates, graduate students, and early career professionals — participate in study/research exchanges or as English teaching assistants in local schools abroad each year.

Fulbright is a program of the U.S. Department of State, with funding provided by the U.S. Government. Participating governments and host institutions, corporations, and foundations around the world also provide direct and indirect support to the Program, which operates in over 160 countries worldwide.

In the United States, the Institute of International Education implements the Fulbright U.S. Student and U.S. Scholar Programs on behalf of the U.S. Department of State. For more information about the Fulbright Program, visit https://fulbrightprogram.org.