Alumni Spotlight: Allison Meakem

Allison, who grew up in northern Virginia, attributes her passion for foreign languages and cultural exchange to her parents and her multi-cultural upbringing. Her father, who previously served as a Foreign Service Officer, and her mother, who is from Germany, made sure that Allison was exposed to a variety of cultures and languages at an early age. She attended German School on Saturdays and spoke both English and German at home.

Allison began studying French and Japanese in middle school and found language learning to be a rewarding challenge, “similar to deciphering a code.” Being a polyglot, she shares, taught her that language learning is necessary to understand other cultures and expand one’s own world view. When Allison heard about NSLI-Y during her junior year of high school, she immediately applied, fueled by a desire to connect with globally-minded peers and “puncture [her] Western-centric bubble.” Of all the languages offered, Allison states that Turkish appealed to her most due to her German identity—and the relationship between Germany and Türkiye.

“Germany is home to the largest Turkish diaspora community in the world, and Turkish culture has had an enormous impact on modern German society. However, there have also been pain points and misunderstandings,” she says. Most Germans do not engage with the Turkish language, Allison notes; she felt that learning Turkish would allow her to become “an important interlocutor between different communities in a rapidly diversifying Germany.”

While on the program, Allison expanded her language skills through immersive Turkish courses. But she emphasizes that it was out-of-classroom experiences that held the most enduring value. In her day-to-day interactions, Allison had opportunities to navigate an unfamiliar cultural context, make local friends, and learn about Turkish politics and regional affairs, instilling in her a lifelong interest in the Middle East. When over one million refugees, most from Syria and Iraq, fled to Germany through Türkiye during the summer of 2015, Allison’s German background became linked to her interest in Türkiye and the broader Middle East. The following year, she enrolled at Brown University with the intent to study Middle Eastern Studies and Turkish.

At Brown, Allison instead enrolled in Arabic courses—they were offered more frequently than Turkish—but she continued to center her academic studies around Türkiye. She authored numerous articles for the Brown Political Review, where she was a staff writer and editor, on Türkiye’s politics and wrote her senior honors thesis on diaspora voting policies for Turkish communities in Germany. It won the award for the best thesis on international relations, foreign policy analysis, or diplomatic history written at Brown that year.

Additionally, through multiple other undergraduate engagement opportunities and internships—including at Germany’s public broadcasting network Deutsche Welle; Scholz & Friends, a PR firm; think tank Global Public Policy Institute; Brown University’s Climate and Development Lab; and the Brown-based Ivy Film Festival—Allison built a robust portfolio of journalistic work and diversified into other disciplines including climate policy, sports, film, education, and archaeology.

Since her graduation from Brown in 2020, Allison has worked as an editor at Foreign Policy magazine, carving out a “niche for [herself] as an analyst of Turkish politics, Turkish-German relations, and Germany’s multicultural evolution.” Allison also writes a monthly column on U.S. society for Spotlight, a German magazine that belongs to the ZEIT publishing group.

Reflecting on her career, Allison shares that journalism perfectly entwines her loves for current affairs, writing, and languages. “I value how journalism—unlike academia—seeks to inform general audiences in accessible language. I believe strongly in the power of media as a free or inexpensive educational resource and force for good in our democracy,” Allison says. She maintains that “NSLI-Y has had more of an impact on [her] academic and professional pursuits than any other life experience” and that it inspired her to write about and explore areas of the world that are “often glossed over in U.S discourse.”

Allison has also used her multilingual talents to help others learn foreign languages. She volunteered to teach immersive English classes to immigrant adults in Rhode Island and German courses—in Arabic—to Syrian and Palestinian refugees in Amman, Jordan, where she studied abroad in college. Allison has also taught Arabic to high school students in Rhode Island.

“Teaching language is a great way for me to remain engaged with the languages I speak and converse with learners from different backgrounds,” Allison notes. “The courses are never just about grammar and syntax, but also about culture, customs, and vulnerability. We become different versions of ourselves when we speak new languages, and it is a treat to watch others go through this journey of self-discovery.”