Kelsey Norman, a UC Irvine Ph.D. student in political science, has received a U.S. State Department Critical Language Scholarship to study Arabic in Morocco.

Norman (pictured, in Egypt) will live with a host family in the historic city of Meknes while attending classes this summer. She is one of about 610 American undergraduate and graduate students in the scholarship program who will spend seven to 10 weeks at intensive language institutes in 13 countries learning Arabic, Azerbaijani, Bangla, Chinese, Hindi, Korean, Indonesian, Japanese, Persian, Punjabi, Russian, Turkish and Urdu.

“I’m thrilled about the opportunity to continue building my language skills in a new Arabic-speaking country and familiarizing myself with Morocco’s sociopolitical and cultural context as part of my pre-dissertation research,” Norman said.

The program is part of a U.S. government effort to increase the number of Americans who know critical foreign languages. Norman studies citizenship and global migration with a focus on the Middle East.