UNITED STATES TO GREECE
Narrative Medicine specialist
Catherine Rogers' (Fulbright U.S. Scholar 2008-2009 / Fulbright Specialist 2013 & 2016) work bridges performance, education, and healthcare, with a particular focus on narrative as a tool for learning, language acquisition, and clinical practice.
Rogers was awarded a Fulbright Senior Scholar grant in 2009 for Performing (My) World History, a project that used playwriting and performance to help undergraduate literature and philology students strengthen their English-language skills. During her fellowship, she taught at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, while also leading lectures and workshops for K–12 teachers in Athens, Chalkidiki, and Sparti on using playwriting to teach English. Through the American Corners tour, she further brought playwriting to students and community audiences across Greece, from grade-school students in Corfu and high-school students in Veria to a community theater in Neos Kosmos.
Rogers returned to Greece as a Fulbright Specialist in Narrative Medicine in 2013, working in Athens and Thessaloniki, and again in 2026 at the Department of Medicine of the University of Ioannina. At a time when Narrative Medicine had only a single designated Fulbright Specialist, these appointments helped establish enduring, reciprocal relationships between Columbia University and academic communities in Greece, including the Schools of English and Medicine at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
Her engagement with Greece has continued well beyond her Fulbright appointments. She has participated in WellMed conferences on clinician wellbeing since their inception and has contributed to performance and educational initiatives in universities, hospitals, and the Poets House in Nea Ionia. Through these activities, she has remained closely connected to Greece's medical and humanities communities while fostering dialogue between the arts, education, and healthcare.
Rogers continues to study the Greek language both in New York City and at the Athens Centre, reflecting her long-standing personal and professional commitment to Greece and to cross-cultural exchange through narrative, performance, and medicine.
She is deeply grateful to the Fulbright Foundation Greece and to fellow Fulbrighters and Specialist hosts Tatiani Rapatzikou and Liana Sakelliou, whose own lectures and appearances at Columbia Narrative Medicine in New York have helped sustain and expand the collaboration that began with her 2009 Fulbright experience.