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Fulbright honors

Sarah Durkee ’24

Two recent graduates—Sarah Durkee ’24 and Felix Thomspon ’24—recently were awarded Fulbright grants.

Durkee won a Fulbright Combined Award for Austria to perform research, take classes, and teach English during the 2024–25 academic year in Vienna, where Sigmund Freud, the neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis, worked and lived much of his life.

Through journals and correspondence, Durkee hopes to understand Freud’s philosophy on the technology growth of the 20th century and to use it in the context of today’s emerging artificial intelligence (AI) technology. Beyond her research, Durkee will teach English to secondary school students and will take classes at the University of Vienna, where Freud earned a degree in medicine.

Felix Thompson ’24

Durkee, who earned a B.A. summa cum laude with honors in both philosophy and interdisciplinary computing with philosophy, plans to start her Ph.D. in philosophy at Boston University after the Fulbright.

Thompson received a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship for Tajikistan. He left in August for the Central Asian country and will be there through June 2025.

During that time, he will focus on English language coursework in an embassy-controlled area. The public policy and law major said that after his Fulbright experience, he would like to find his place within the U.S. State Department.