Office of Scholar Development Staff

Dr. Grimsley is in HCIC 1041 (inside the Mahurin Honors College suite). To schedule a meeting, click here!

Melinda Grimsley works primarily with students applying for the Fulbright U.S. Student Program, the Department of State Critical Language Scholarship, the Department of Defense Boren Awards for International Study, and the US-UK Fulbright Commission Summer Institute awards.

Dr. Grimsley earned a Ph.D. in history from the University of Notre Dame, where she studied the development and function of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Irish lunacy inspectorate and local government, as well as the professionalization of Irish psychiatry. At Notre Dame, she received a Presidential Fellowship, a pre-doctoral teaching fellowship from the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies, and several smaller grants to fund research in Dublin, Cork, and Co. Tipperary, Ireland, and Belfast, Northern Ireland.

As a fellowships advisor, she thinks of students' experiences and skills the same way she learned to think of historical sources: as bits of evidence to be interpreted for readers in a compelling, seamless narrative. She believes that we are the stories we tell ourselves; the storytelling we practice in applications is one of the most powerful tools we have for professional and personal development.

Dr. Grimsley is a native of Utica, Kentucky and the mom of two weird and wonderful kiddos. She loves all things outdoors and her preferred mode of self-care is running very long distances in the woods for no good reason.