Greenville Leader

The U.S.-Ireland Alliance announced the 12 members of the George J. Mitchell Scholar Class of 2023, considered one of the most prestigious scholarship programs that gives future American leaders a chance to go to Ireland and enroll in a graduate program for a year, and Asha Marie Larson-Baldwin is one of them.

"I'm really interested in how public symbolism and sites of memory can aid in the peacemaking process and in communities that have struggled with conflict. At Queen's University, I'm hoping to learn more about the Troubles in Northern Ireland and to be able to apply that knowledge in the South. That's where I see myself doing work – in things like Confederate monuments and how we reckon with legacies of slavery," Larson-Baldwin said.

Chosen from a field of 351 applicants, Larson-Baldwin will embark on an expenses-paid, one-year master's program in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where she will study public history at Queen's University.

The last time Furman University laid claim to a Mitchell Scholar was in 2003 when Monica C. Bell '03 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. Larson-Baldwin made her mark 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.

Larson-Baldwin is studying advocacy and justice as part of an individualized curriculum program at Furman.