Dr. Claire Braaten has spent much of her career helping students understand the legal complexities of crime, human trafficking, and cybersecurity. Soon, she'll take that work beyond the classroom as a Fulbright U.S. Scholar.
Braaten, professor of criminology and criminal justice, has received a prestigious Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award through the Fulbright U.S.-ASEAN Visiting Scholar Initiative. The award will support field research in the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam during the summer of 2027, where she will examine how governments are responding to the growing threat of cyber-enabled labor trafficking and transnational scam operations.
Braaten is one of two University faculty members to receive this prestigious honor. Dr. Volkan Ozbek recently received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award for 2026-2027 from the U.S. Department of State. He will spend the spring 2027 semester at Management Center Innsbruck, a leading business-focused institution in Austria, where he will serve as a guest lecturer and instructor.
For Braaten, the award represents the culmination of years of research and a deeply personal connection to Southeast Asia.
"It's a great opportunity," she said. "I've been wanting to do this for several years. I’m very interested in the subject matter. It's really close to my heart."
Braaten joined A&M-San Antonio in 2011, shortly after earning her Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from Sam Houston State University. Drawn to the University's entrepreneurial spirit, she saw an opportunity to help build a new academic program from the ground up.
"In 2011, A&M-San Antonio was still very new. It was the chance to build something from scratch."
Originally from the Philippines, Braaten comes from a family of educators. Her mother taught music, her father taught engineering, and her grandmother was also an educator. Before entering academia, she practiced law in the Philippines, handling corporate and criminal cases. She later earned a master's degree in international and economic business law in Japan before pursuing doctoral studies in the United States.
Today, her teaching and research focus on criminal law, courts, cybersecurity, cybercrime, organized crime and human trafficking.
Her Fulbright project will examine one of the fastest-growing criminal enterprises in Southeast Asia: scam compounds that recruit victims through fraudulent job advertisements before trapping them in heavily guarded facilities and forcing them to commit online financial crimes.
The operations often target young job seekers from developing countries by advertising attractive positions in information technology, sales or customer service. Once recruits arrive, many discover they have been trafficked.
"They're brought to these scam compounds, and they can't leave," Braaten said. "They're victims of labor trafficking, but they're forced to scam people around the world through cryptocurrency fraud, fake investments and other online schemes."
Victims who fail to meet production quotas can face severe punishment, including beatings, starvation and isolation.
"It's a concept known as forced criminality," she said.
Braaten's research explores a difficult legal question facing governments across the region: How should criminal justice systems treat people who have committed crimes while being trafficked themselves?
Her fieldwork will include interviews with prosecutors, judges, law enforcement officials and other criminal justice professionals to better understand how countries are addressing these complex cases.
The project builds on research Braaten began in 2024 with support from an internal Texas A&M-San Antonio Research Council grant. During that work, she conducted interviews with government officials in Manila and Bangkok using professional relationships she developed through her legal education and previous work in Southeast Asia.
Those findings are now forming the basis of a book currently under review by academic publishers.
The Fulbright award will allow her to expand that work across three countries and explore regional efforts to combat organized cybercrime and human trafficking.
Established in 2012, the Fulbright U.S.-ASEAN Visiting Scholar Initiative strengthens educational and research partnerships between the United States and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), an intergovernmental organization of 11 member states. The competitive program supports research on issues of regional importance, including public health, trade, environmental science, law and human trafficking.
For Braaten, the experience will also strengthen the education she provides A&M-San Antonio students.
"I teach human trafficking, criminal law, cybercrime and cybersecurity, so this research directly informs those classes," she said. "Students are much more engaged when you can bring real fieldwork into the classroom and show them what's happening in the world today rather than only discussing abstract concepts."
As one of academia's most prestigious international honors, the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award recognizes faculty members whose work advances research, teaching and global collaboration. When Braaten returns from Southeast Asia, she plans to bring firsthand perspectives that will prepare the next generation of criminal justice professionals to understand the increasingly global nature of crime.
"That's one of the greatest benefits," she said. "I'll be able to bring those experiences back to my students."