By: Talia Holzman, William & Mary
Hi! My name is Talia Holzman, and I am a rising Senior at William & Mary studying Government and Philosophy. I am the president of the Women’s Rugby Team, a member of William & Mary’s Year of Civic Leadership subcommittees, and a Better Arguments Fellow. Rugby brings me joy and confidence that I have found empowers me through my other extracurriculars and academics, and my work with YOCL and Better Arguments is the result of the deep passion I have for building bridges across differences. I aspire to a career centered around the promotion of pluralism and repairing divisions, whether that be through law, public policy, or public facing non-profit work.
My interest in bridging cross-cultural and ideological divides led me directly to The American Bosnia Collaboration Project, which is in its 27th year of forging cross-cultural connections between Bosnians and Americans through teaching Intercultural Communicative Competency Skills (ICC skills) to Bosnian youth. The Bosnian education system is segregated by ethnic groups, and this project creates the valuable opportunity for students to engage with and learn alongside peers of different backgrounds. We are aiming to research the best methods to improve ICC skills, and this year our focus is investigating the effectiveness of storytelling based activities on the improvement of ICC skills. I was intrigued by this research due to its interdisciplinary nature, as this project touches on political science, education, international relations, and sociology, which are all fields I am interested in. This work is community based, and partnered with a local NGO called Creativus. Due to the long standing relationship of the project, it makes a real impact year after year, through soft diplomacy and true community engagement.
After a full semester of preparation and learning the historical and cultural context of our work, I will be traveling to Sarajevo, Bosnia, alongside 3 William & Mary students. We will be living in Sarajevo for a month, in homestays that have supported this project since its founding. In order to conduct our research, we will be teaching alongside Bosnian master’s students who are working towards degrees in English education. The significant local ties that we will have access to will be immensely valuable, not just to help us navigate the city, but to immerse us in the perspectives of Bosnian’s themselves. International Research has the potential to be harmful if done wrong, but if done right it leads to opportunities for cross-cultural understanding, enduring diplomacy, and a better understanding of humanity itself. This research prioritizes depth of interpersonal engagement that is unique to the ABC project, due to the unique context of the Bosnian cultural and educational landscape.
I am looking forward to forging deep connections with my Bosnian co-teacher, Šejla, as well as my host family and the surrounding community. I am so excited to learn how to become a better teacher and mentor, and to learn from my students themselves. I am sure that teaching will be equally as challenging as it is rewarding, but I could not be more ready to jump in. This year we are focusing on promoting hope for our students and ourselves. It is so easy to get caught up in the chaos of the world we live in, but by traveling to a new country and promoting understanding across differences, we can plant seeds of hope in others and ourselves. Travel provides the opportunity to find the shared humanity in those who could not be more different from me, demonstrating just how much hope is possible. Little moments like waving to a child in a coffee shop or sharing a conversation with a taxi driver always strike me as the foundation of shared humanity. The value of the research I will be doing would not exist without the context of human connection that comes along with being a foreigner in a beautiful country, hoping to immerse myself in a new culture.
The 2026 American Bosnia Collaboration Project Cohort!
From top left: Talia Holzman, Akash Nayak
From bottom left: Landen Brooke, Dora O’Connor
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