Alumna Wins Fulbright to Study Interethnic Relations in Estonia

Mount Holyoke has another Fulbright fellow in Laura Creswell '00. She will spend the next academic year in the Baltic state of Estonia, building on her MHC senior thesis, "Citizenship Lost: Estonia's Russian Minority."

Stephen Jones, MHC associate professor of Russian and Eurasian studies and Creswell's adviser, calls his former student's thesis "excellent." "Laura emailed I don't know whom and pestered the Estonian Embassy until they sent her every different version of the citizenship law. She was able to trace its evolution over the last decade or so —the time it had been under discussion. I was most impressed by her detective work."

Some 600,000 of Estonia's 1.5 million inhabitants are non-Estonians. Most migrated to the area during the Soviet era and perceive themselves as Russian. As non-Estonians, they have been denied citizenship in the new country (formed after the collapse of the Soviet Union), and thus excluded from certain jobs, educational opportunities, and political participation in Estonian society. According to Creswell, Estonian nationalist rhetoric and legislation have sought to maintain this inequitable status quo. Pressure by international organizations, however, may be forcing Estonia to institute more inclusive policies. As Estonia vies for membership in the European Union, it will most likely have to abandon its ideal of a nation-state in favor of a multiethnic one, Creswell says.

During her Fulbright year in Estonia, Creswell will study parliamentary debates and legislation addressing interethnic relations. She will also conduct interviews, both with officials at the Estonian branch of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and with members of the Russian cultural minority. Her academic base is likely to be Tallinn Pedagogical University.
Since graduating last year, Creswell has lived in Washington, D.C., where she works for a contractor of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), researching issues of population, health, and nutrition in Africa and Asia. She also holds an internship at the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, an affiliate of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Her year in Estonia will be far from her first extended stay in the former Soviet bloc. She spent the fall of her junior year in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and the following semester in Budapest, Hungary.

Creswell's interest in foreign cultures can be traced back to her childhood in Lubbock, Texas, when her family hosted foreign exchange students. She spent a high school year in Osaka, Japan. As a first-year student at MHC, she continued to pursue her studies of Japanese language and culture, but gradually shifted toward the west—relatively speaking, that is—by developing a fascination with things Russian. Her favorite courses centered on Russia and Eastern Europe: a Russian literature course with Edwina Cruise, professor and chair of Russian and Russian and Eurasian studies, and classes in politics and history with Constantine Pleshakov, visiting assistant professor of Russian and Eurasian studies, Jones, and Jeremy King, assistant professor of history. She credits Cruise and King with teaching her how to write. "They spent so much time with me, working on draft upon draft." Now, Creswell says, she can quickly and confidently put together a fifteen-page report at work, a task with which she sees others struggle. "Laura has extraordinary drive," says Cruise. "She deserves that Fulbright—she earned it."

When asked about the greatest nonacademic influence in her life, Creswell replies without hesitation: "Definitely my grandmother. She took me traveling every summer from the time I was seven until the age of sixteen or seventeen. We went all over the United States. I think I've inherited my wanderlust from her—her courage, strength, and love of adventure have taught me to be unafraid of new things."

Creswell's post-Estonia plans include graduate school, preferably the London School of Economics. In the long term, she sees herself working in human rights and development.

As the College Street Journal went to press, it was announced that another alumna, Maura K. Camosse '00, had won a Fulbright fellowship to study in Zambia. "Maura is a truly adventurous young woman, intellectually and personally," says Eugenia Herbert, Professor Emeritus of History, who was one of Camosse's professors at MHC. "In the best Mount Holyoke tradition she goes where few have gone before, first to Fort Hare University in South Africa (where for much of the time she was the only white female student) and now to Barotseland in the Upper Zambezi Valley, because of a compelling desire to understand and make friends with people of other cultures. It is great to see Maura continue the succession of students winning Fulbrights to Africa in the past few years." Kiyoko Takahashi '01 also won a Fulbright this year. She will spend next year studying cancer prevention in Japan.

The Fulbright program was created by the United States Congress in 1946 to foster mutual understanding among nations through educational and cultural exchanges. Each year the program allows Americans to study or conduct research in more than 140 nations. Over the past twenty years, more than twenty MHC seniors (and at least eight alumnae) have won awards in the Fulbright competition. Among them, several have pursued English teaching assistantships in Germany, and others have been awarded grants for study/research. These have included archaeology studies in England, literature in Pakistan, zoology in Australia, biology in Switzerland, international relations in Germany, politics in Poland, women's tobacco clubs in Malawi, soccer clubs in Bolivia, and anti-HIV therapy in Senegal.