{"id":9663,"date":"2021-12-07T18:56:27","date_gmt":"2021-12-07T18:56:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2021\/12\/08\/asha-marie-larson-baldwin-named-george-j-mitchell-scholar\/"},"modified":"2022-09-07T15:44:56","modified_gmt":"2022-09-07T19:44:56","slug":"asha-marie-larson-baldwin-named-george-j-mitchell-scholar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/asha-marie-larson-baldwin-named-george-j-mitchell-scholar\/","title":{"rendered":"Asha Marie Larson-Baldwin named George J. Mitchell Scholar"},"content":{"rendered":"

The waiting was agonizing for Asha Marie Larson-Baldwin \u201922. On the day she would learn whether she had been accepted as one of only 12 class of 2023 George J. Mitchell Scholars<\/a>, Larson-Baldwin was too worked up to sit still on campus. So, she and friend and mentor Emilee O\u2019Brien \u201917 went downtown to kill some time.<\/p>\n

Earlier, following an intense, four-part video interview process spanning three months, Larson-Baldwin was told by a U.S.-Ireland Alliance<\/a> representative that she would get a call if the news was good and an email if she was not among the recipients.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was hanging out with Emilee, and I saw my phone light up with a 202 (Washington, D.C.) number,\u201d Larson-Baldwin said. That\u2019s when she knew she had made it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was late and super cold. I ran out of the restaurant, and I couldn\u2019t stop laughing, because if I did, I would cry,\u201d said Larson-Baldwin. \u201cIt just felt unreal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chosen from a field of 351 applicants, Larson-Baldwin will embark on an expenses-paid, one-year master\u2019s program in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where she will study public history at Queen\u2019s University.<\/p>\n

The last time Furman University laid claim to a Mitchell Scholar was in 2003 when Monica C. Bell \u201903 was honored. Bell, a member of the Mitchell Scholars selection committee, is an associate professor of law and an associate professor of sociology at Yale.<\/p>\n

Larson-Baldwin made her mark<\/a> on her hometown of Greenville, South Carolina, before she ever set foot on the Furman campus. She collected 10,000 signatures for a petition in support of changing the name of her high school named for Wade Hampton, a slaveholder and Confederate general during the Civil War.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m really interested in how public symbolism and sites of memory can aid in the peacemaking process and in communities that have struggled with conflict,\u201d said Larson-Baldwin, who is studying advocacy and justice as part of an individualized curriculum program at Furman.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt Queen\u2019s University, I\u2019m hoping to learn more about the Troubles<\/a> in Northern Ireland and to be able to apply that knowledge in the South. That\u2019s where I see myself doing work \u2013 in things like Confederate monuments and how we reckon with legacies of slavery,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

During one of her interviews, she was asked about what she\u2019s looking forward to when she travels to Northern Ireland in 2022-2023.<\/p>\n

The first and most honest thing that came to Larson-Baldwin\u2019s mind probably wasn\u2019t what the selection panel expected.<\/p>\n

\u201cI told them I\u2019m excited to go on a \u2018Derry Girls\u2019 filming location tour,\u201d she said, laughing. The Nexflix comedy series is set in Derry, Northern Ireland, in the 1990s during the latter part of the Troubles. She will be only an hour away from the filming location.<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess the more sensible answer is that I\u2019m thrilled to be in a community that\u2019s not my home,” said Larson-Baldwin. “It\u2019s been really rewarding to get to go to college in the same place I grew up. But it will be really nice to add a new global dimension to what I\u2019m interested in doing for work one day, and the questions I\u2019m interested in investigating.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The waiting was agonizing for Asha Marie Larson-Baldwin \u201922. On the day she would learn whether she had been accepted as one of only 12 class of 2023 George J. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":257,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,26,3,70,35,32,22,27,47,61,7],"tags":[1198,397,1199,109,1110,1200,1201],"class_list":["post-9663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-administrative","category-alumni","category-diversity-equity-and-inclusion","category-parent-news","category-politics-and-international-affairs","category-sociology","category-student-life","category-study-away-and-international-education","category-the-furman-advantage","category-top-four-news-2nd-story","tag-belfast","tag-confederate-monuments","tag-derry-girls","tag-memory","tag-slavery","tag-the-troubles","tag-wade-hampton"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/257"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9663\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}