Alumni Ambassadors

Courtney Welton-Mitchell

Courtney Welton-Mitchell
Job title
Clinical Assistant Professor; Research Associate
Email
courtney.welton-mitchell@cuanschutz.edu
Academic year
August 2017 - June 2018
Discipline
Public Health and Social Psychology
Project
Development and Testing of a Gender-based Violence Intervention to Address Intimate Partner Abuse Among Rohingya in Malaysia
Institution
University of Colorado Boulder
Countries
Malaysia

Courtney is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at the Colorado School of Public Health, where she works primarily with the Public Health Preparedness and Disaster Response certificate programs. She is also a Research Associate with the Natural Hazards Center, Institute for Behavioral Science, University of Colorado, Boulder. Her research focuses on health/public health interventions in disasters and complex humanitarian crises using mixed methods. Courtney has conducted studies on group-based mental health, gender-based violence, and disaster preparedness interventions, including public health messaging campaigns and social norms approaches to attitude and behavioral change. Increasingly, she has turned her attention to understanding psychological and other factors influencing risk communication, perception, and behaviors, including in relation to COVID-19.

During her Fulbright Courtney was based in Penang, Malaysia with travel to Kuala Lumpur for data collection. She worked with a local immigrant rights organization (Tenaganita) on research with Rohingya refugees. Initially she received funding for this multi-year initiative from the U.S. State Department, Bureau of Population and Refugee Migration (BPRM). However, the addition of Fulbright provided her with an opportunity to relocate with her family to Malaysia for 10 months, based at the Centre for Research on Women & Gender (KANITA), University of Science, Malaysia. While at KANITA, USM Courtney taught research seminars, facilitated a journal club and advised students. Fulbright enabled her to build relationships with students, colleagues and community members, engaging in bidirectional capacity building on a deeper level than would have otherwise been possible with the BPRM grant funding alone. Joint publications and collaborative research initiatives have resulted from the connections she made during her Fulbright in Malaysia.

Ask Me About:

  • Relocating with family for Fulbright
  • Managing visa challenges
  • Securing additional research funding while on a Fulbright
  • Working with local civil society organizations
  • Being based at an interdisciplinary research institute
  • Working with sensitive research topics and disenfranchised groups including refugees and other immigrants