Two Fulbrights granted for further exploration in media and journalism

UNC Hussman Professor Tori Ekstrand and recent graduate Abby Pender ’25 have received Fulbright Scholar Awards for the 2025-26 year. The Fulbright Program offers competitive fellowships for international, educational and cultural exchange. 

“UNC Hussman students and faculty are deeply engaged both locally and globally,” said Raul Reis, dean of the school. “Our success in drawing Fulbright fellowships is one measure of the quality of our international engagement and speaks to our position as a global leader in research, service and cultural exchange in media and journalism.” 

Tori Ekstrand 

Tori Ekstrand received the Fulbright-Schuman Innovation Award, funded by the European Union, to expand her studies on media law and AI education. She will partner with UNC’s strategic partner, the University of Tübingen in Germany, to further her research project titled, “Building Transatlantic Media Law Education and the Prospective U.S. Digital Media Workforce.” Her work aims to prepare U.S. media students for changes and differences in transatlantic regulation of media and AI on a global scale. Her work will extend beyond Germany, with plans to travel to Belgium to interview European Union policymakers and business leaders about transatlantic AI governance. 

This award further extends and plays a role in Ekstrand’s overall media and AI focus, which includes research on the impact of AI on the First Amendment and her new course — “MEJO 440: Digital Media Law and Society” — that allowed students to travel to Washington D.C. last spring to learn more about technology and privacy at the IAPP Global Privacy Summit. 

“Much of media law is at the heart of debates about AI governance,” said Ekstrand. “In many cases, it’s about addressing digital privacy regulation. Are we going to federally legislate digital privacy in the United States in a way that we have seen in other parts of the world?” 

At UNC, her research and teaching has been in partnership with and supported by UNC Global Affairs and the UNC Center for European Studies. Her research focuses on how technology influences behaviors — and the related laws in different countries. With varying AI regulations in different countries, Ekstrand will study what it means for media law students who go on to work for global or international companies. 

“We will need graduates who understand both the technology and the legal apparatus,” said Ekstrand. “Students who have some mastery of both the law and the technology are going to be very much in demand in the coming years. They’re hard to find because we tend to have workers who are either trained in law or trained to work with or develop new technology. And the truth is, we’re going to need graduates who can talk across these boundaries and address some of the concerns about human oversight of AI, transparency, data protection and accountability.” 

Abby Pender 

Abby Pender ’25 received a Fulbright U.S. Student program award to serve as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Colombia where she will support language learning at a university. She also plans to work with her host community to document Amerindian languages and Afro-Colombian music. 

One of her goals is to display more of the cultural vibrancy within Colombia. She plans to do this by studying the exchange between Colombian cultures and other cultures, including European, Indigenous and Afro-Colombian cultures with a focus on music, language and cultural traditions and customs. 

“I am looking forward to being a really small part of wherever I am,” said Pender. “I feel like creating deep relationships with people that you’re around when you’re in a different place and learning through conversation and connection, rather than observance, is really important to me, and that’s where I did most of my learning when I was in Argentina.” 

After studying abroad in Buenos Aires during her junior year, she gained a newfound interest in bilingual international reporting. Pender has taken Spanish since she was in kindergarten and continued her studies at UNC after realizing how being bilingual impacts education. Her education background in both Hispanic studies and media and journalism inspired her to return to South America. 

“Learning a different language from a young age has rewired my mindset about thinking of where concepts and things come from, and how we describe them through language,” said Pender. “I think understanding how different people perceive the world, and then how they prescribe different words to those feelings is really important, especially within storytelling and journalism.”