Two Carleton seniors awarded Watson Fellowships for yearlong global exploration

Two Carleton seniors, Florence Basile ’26 and Henry Burkhardt ’26, have been selected as recipients of the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship this year. The fellowship supports graduating seniors in pursuing a year of independent exploration outside of the United States. Emphasizing personal growth over formal outcomes, the fellowship allows students to design and carry out projects rooted in their own interests. Basile and Burkhardt will each spend the year engaging with creative practices across the globe.

Basile will explore theatrical design through her project, Designing the Invisible Stage, working with a range of theater companies to expand her understanding of experimental and interdisciplinary design. Her work will span lighting, scenic, and costume design, as well as visual media such as photography and videography.

She plans to begin in Edinburgh, Scotland, attending the Fringe Festival before returning to work with the festival. From there, she will travel to Greece to collaborate with the National Theatre of Northern Greece, followed by a period in New Zealand working with a volunteer-run grassroots theater company. She is also in contact with organizations in Australia and Japan, including a group in Tokyo that integrates traditional Japanese and Western theater techniques: Tokyo International Players.

“Through this project, I’m hoping to think more abstractly with more experimental works,” Basile said. “I want to think outside the box.”

Basile became interested in theater during her time at Carleton, building on a background in film and visual storytelling. Rather than focusing solely on realism, she is interested in how design can shape and construct entirely new environments and ways of experiencing performance. During her 12 months at different theaters across the world, she will work with multiple different perspectives of design.

“I’ve made myself open to any design [roles], such as lighting, scenic, costume, and [even] poster design, which I’ve done a bit of at Carleton,” she said. “I want to [impact] the first impression that the audience gets at the show, continuing with videography and photography, and [gain] as many skills as I can.”

She plans to spend several months in each location, allowing for sustained collaboration and deeper involvement in productions.

“It’s really nice that I’ll be staying in each of these places for at least two or three months, so I can really get to know the people I’m working with and the project,” Basile said. “I can have bigger roles, as opposed to just stopping in for a few weeks or a month. I’ll be able to be very hands-on.”

Burkhardt’s project, Musical Technologies: Organic to Algorithmic, will examine how people create and engage with music through a wide range of technologies. Drawing on his background in both music and computer science, he defines technology broadly, from physical instruments to digital sound-generating systems.

Burkhardt’s project revolves around a central question: “How do musicians, engineers, and instrument-makers inform each other’s work?” Through a year of hands-on collaboration, he plans to examine how technology shapes musical expression, how cultural practices shape technology, and how human agency and new self-generating systems co-exist.

He will travel to countries including Indonesia, Argentina, The Gambia, and Germany, working hands-on in each location on projects like building pipe organs, constructing recording studios, and building new digital musical instruments. He will also collaborate on experimental musical projects around the world, including aleatory (chance-based) composition and music produced from the chemical signals of fungi.

All of his planned experiences involve direct participation in creative, hands-on musical and engineering work.

“When putting together my project, I turned away from experiences that were purely extractive,” Burkhardt said. “I tried to find places where I could learn by doing, and at the same time meaningfully contribute to projects.”

Burkhardt developed his project by reflecting on his long-standing interests in both music and engineering, bringing together academic and personal experiences into his proposal.

“The application for the Watson Fellowship is unique in that you design your own project from scratch. I felt my application was an almost perfect synthesis of everything I’m interested in,” Burkhardt said. “One reason I decided to apply for Watson was because I was convinced the application process would be really valuable even if I wasn’t selected.”

The Watson Fellowship application process requires students to design their own projects, contact potential collaborators, and go through multiple rounds of interviews. Carleton nominates a small number of students each year to advance to the final selection stage.

Both Basile and Burkhardt credited faculty mentorship and campus resources with supporting their applications. They highlighted the role of professors and fellowship advisers, especially Marynel Ryan Van Zee from the Office of Student Fellowships, who connected both students to the opportunity.

“I wasn’t planning on applying for [the Watson Fellowship] until August. I was actually working on a different fellowship application,” Burkhardt said. “[Ryan Van Zee] told me my application might be good for the Watson Fellowship. I’d heard about it before, but she really convinced me to go for it.”

As they prepare for the year ahead, both students emphasized the independence required to carry out their projects, as well as the opportunity to explore without a fixed outcome.

For Basile, the experience may lead to graduate study in scenic design and future work in theater or film production.

“I think it will be a really valuable opportunity to spend a year exploring different kinds of work and learning in new environments,” Basile said.

Burkhardt expects his plans to evolve as he engages with different communities and creative practices.

“One of the coolest things about the Watson Fellowship is that the product is intended to be us, the people carrying out the projects,” Burkhardt said. “I hope to come away from my year with answers to the academic questions my project is asking, but I’m even more excited to have another year of freedom, to follow my own curiosities wherever they may lead me.”