Professor Awarded Prestigious Brazilian Research Fellowship

Dr. Climent-Espino has been awarded the highly competitive Foreign Visiting Researcher Scholarship from the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development. The fellowship will support his work over three consecutive years, during which he will spend one month each year conducting research with the group Literature in Expanded Field (LICEX) at Presbyterian Mckenzie University in São Paulo, Brazil.

While in São Paulo, he will take part in collaborative, in-person research with the group, contribute to collective volumes and special issues of academic journals, and present talks on his forthcoming book, Female Agency and Textile Elaboration in Latin America: Weavings, Texts, and Embroideries.

As a longtime collaborator with Brazilian scholars, Dr. Climent-Espino previously served as a doctoral exchange student at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Belo Horizonte. His research has focused on Brazilian literature and culture, and this fellowship strengthens those scholarly ties while expanding international collaboration.

Reflecting on his international study and research experiences, Dr. Climent-Espino strongly encourages students to pursue opportunities abroad, describing them as transformative both personally and academically. As he explains, “Being out of your comfort zone, immersed in a language and culture that are not your own, is a valuable experience to understand what is going on in other parts of the world.” He also invites students to consider studying Portuguese, a language spoken by approximately 270 million people worldwide.