As a visiting professor in the department of social anthropology at Panteion University, Cabot will employ a combination of ethnographic research and engaged teaching to explore how the expansion and intensification of civil society initiatives are impacting social ties and notions of community in Athens in the current context of crisis and austerity.

“In the two years in which she has taught at College of the Atlantic, her first full-time teaching position, Heath has developed six new courses, taken on chairmanship of the Ethical Standards Review Board, collaborated widely with a diverse range of faculty, planned a significant new program for students in Italy, and garnered an impressive and highly collegial reputation with students, staff, and colleagues,” said Karen Waldron, COA’s Lisa Stewart Chair in Literature and Women’s Studies.

“As her faculty mentor, I can assure you that she has superb communication skills and considerable previous experience in Greece, and Athens in particular, interacting with a wide variety of individuals and organizations, all of whom have welcomed her return. She writes with a passionate power and intellectual acuity that is highly disciplined, and has proven herself a natural, warm, and ethical cultural ambassador, sensitive to the local environment.”

The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. Approximately 325,400 “Fulbrighters,” 122,800 from the U.S. and 202,600 from other countries, have participated in the Program since its inception in 1946. The Program awards approximately 8,000 grants annually, and operates in over 155 countries worldwide. http://eca.state.gov/fulbright

Cabot will be in Greece conducting her project during COA’s Winter and Spring terms of 2015. Her work there will constitute the foundation of her next major ethnographic project, as well as a second monograph. She will also run a seminar at Panteion with scholars, students, and members of civil society to engage with these questions in a teaching context. The seminar is based on her class at COA, Ethnography, Advocacy, and Ethics.

“This is an extraordinary opportunity to continue the research on civil society and social justice that I began through my dissertation research and first book project (funded by the Fulbright IIE),” Cabot said. “Now, however, with Athens under austerity measures, there are some incredible difficulties that people are facing, but they are doing so in ways that are also, I think, incredibly creative and speak to the possibilities of human community building under contexts of duress. There is much to be learned from that, and I can’t wait to be able to explore this in a city that I have come to know and love so much, but which now is facing such a difficult moment. I believe such stories of human survival and community building are at the heart of the study of the “human” in human ecology.”