MIDDLETOWN, N.Y. – Dr. Michael Strmiska, professor of global studies and world history at SUNY Orange, has received a prestigious Fulbright Teaching Fellowship grant that will support a six-month teaching exchange at Vilnius University, located in Lithuania, during the Spring 2025 semester.

Strmiska, a resident of Middletown who has been a member of the SUNY Orange faculty since 2008, will teach the existing course, East Asian Politics, and a new course, New Religious Movements in Asia. He will research Eastern religions transplanted into Western countries in Lithuanian society and the growing population of students from India and other countries to see the impact on Asian religions in the area.

This will mark Strmiska’s fourth Fulbright Fellowship. During the 1996-97 academic year, he received a Fulbright Student Fellowship for study at the University of Iceland in Reykjavik. Strmiska’s second Fulbright was a Teaching Fellowship for the 2004-05 academic year, when he was a lecturer in a broad range of humanities and social science courses in the Department of Philosophy at Šiauliai University in Šiauliai, Lithuania. During the Spring 2020 semester, Strmiska taught religion-oriented courses in the Social Anthropology Programme at Rīga Stradiņš University (RSU), located in Riga, Latvia, within RSU’s Department of Communication Studies.

“It is a great and surprising honor for me to receive this Fulbright Fellowship to teach at Vilnius University in Lithuania. The Fulbright program is highly competitive and is one of our country's most prestigious academic exchange programs so I am very grateful that my application beat the odds and was selected for the grant. In this time when Russia's invasion of Ukraine casts a shadow of uncertainty across all of Eastern Europe and the Baltic region in particular, it means even more to me. I am also very grateful to President Young and Provost Hackman for supporting me in taking time away from SUNY Orange. I expect to have very fruitful and stimulating adventures both in and out of the classroom in Lithuania. Upon my return to the Global Studies Department, I will bring a little more global perspective that I can apply to my World History teaching. I see this as a win-win situation all around and will do my best to be deserving of this honor,” Strmiska said.

While much of his teaching at SUNY Orange is centered on world history, Strmiska has conducted extensive research in religious studies over the past 15 years, specifically the study of New Religious Movements with a focus on “Neo-Pagan” or Pagan revival religious movements that seek to adapt pre-Christian European religious traditions to the contemporary world. His research, largely anthropological in nature, has taken him to numerous countries, including Iceland, Lithuania, and Latvia, to observe and interact with religious groups. Strmiska has written extensively about his research of religious movements throughout the world, with a focus on the Baltic Region. He also has delivered presentations and keynote addresses internationally.

The J. William Fulbright Program, which aims to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries, is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the United States government. Fulbright alumni have become heads of state, judges, ambassadors, cabinet ministers, CEOs, and university presidents, as well as leading journalists, artists, scientists, and teachers. They include 62 Nobel Laureates, 89 Pulitzer Prize winners, 80 MacArthur Fellows and thousands of leaders across the private, public and non-profit sectors. Since its inception in 1946, more than 400,000 “Fulbrighters” have participated in the program.