Visa Services (inbound) determines the visa and employment options for international students, scholars, visitors, and employees. Works with government agencies, international organizations, U.S. and foreign consular posts, and public and private entities to obtain appropriate visa documentation for admission to the U.S., authorization for employment, and provides maintenance of legal status for Duke's international population.

International House provides educational services, advocacy, and outreach to the international population and the Duke/Durham community.

Payments to Foreign Nationals provides guidelines for departments, including steps to take and forms required in order to process a payment through the Duke system for a foreign employee.

International Comparative Studies (major) offers a BA degree to students interested in the interdisciplinary study of societies and cultures of a particular region of the world, complemented with the comparative study of international issues.

Visiting International Students and Exchange Program is a short-term, non-degree undergraduate experience, either a semester or year long program, which enables international/exchange students the opportunity to participate in courses.

Library Resources

Support for international teaching and research is a major focus of the Perkins Library system and the Law Library. Librarians in the International and Area Studies Department, working closely with faculty and students in Area Studies programs, collect materials in many different formats and languages from around the world to support research and teaching at Duke University. They welcome suggestions for titles to purchase and requests for specialized research consultations or library instruction for classes.

To facilitate research, subject guides have been compiled for Area Studies and Cultures, International and Non-governmental Documents and Legal Resources.  Databases and journals can be accessed by subject as well as by title.

The International and Area studies reading room together with the adjacent librarian offices on the second floor of Bostock provides support for research on international topics and highlights the Library's commitment to and involvement in Area Studies on campus.

Scholarships and Fellowships
Financial Aid, in the form of a variety of undergraduate scholarships and graduate fellowships, are available to Duke students.  Several offices and departments assist in locating the ideal program for various areas of world study.

• The Office of Undergraduate Scholars and Fellows administers campus competitions for most of the distinguished postgraduate scholarships for foreign study (Luce, Marshall, Mitchell, Rhodes, Truman, and Winston Churchill).
• Foreign Language & Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships are designed to encourage the study or use of foreign languages in combination with international or area studies. Priority will be given to students enrolling in a foreign language course each semester while completing full-time course work. In some cases fellowships are awarded for the use of the advanced foreign language while carrying out overseas research during the academic year. The languages for which fellowships are offered are decided by the centers administering the competitions: the Asian/Pacific Studies Institute, the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, the Center for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies, the Middle East Studies Center, and the South Asia Studies Center. The FLAS competitions are open to graduate and professional school students currently enrolled at Duke. In most cases, native speakers of these languages, even if U.S. citizens or permanent residents, are not eligible for a fellowship in their native language.
• Office of Research Support provides information on grant-seeking to novices and established investigators, who can learn here about new sources of funding, internal competitions for Institutionally Limited Opportunities, and new developments affecting the grant-seeking process. In addition they can learn how to use electronic aids in locating research funding, including funding databases, email alert services, the funding resource center, and the funding search tutor. There are time-saving quick links to major research sponsor websites, as well as their grants and forms webpages. There are also helpful tools in your funding search, such as agency-based grant opportunity listings and information about professional societies in research administration and a collection of some of the better proposal writing guides available on the web, including agency and disciplinary specific proposal preparation.
• Global Education for Undergraduates (formerly Study Abroad) is an increasingly popular option for Duke students who want to expand their educational horizons. Duke University is committed to providing an internationally grounded liberal education that will enable its students to understand the world better, appreciate the international contributions to knowledge, and to cope effectively with an increasingly intercultural environment. Duke strongly encourages its students to study abroad: direct experience of another culture is the best way of communication across barriers of custom, language, geography, and politics. An encounter with different values, educational methods, and with a foreign culture can broaden the student's understanding of the world. To see who is studying abroad and where, please review our statistics.
• The Graduate School: Duke has a number of competitive scholarships and fellowships for incoming and advanced graduate students, providing summer and/or year-long funding. This site also outlines standard types of departmental funding through fellowships, endowments, assistantships and instructorships, including important tax information for international students. It contains information about international research opportunities and national, regional and foundation awards as well as links to the Office of Research Support that can help with applying for outside funding sources.
• Through the university’s Hart Leadership Program, Duke seniors and recent alumni may apply to the Hart Fellows Program, which offers recent graduates ten month fellowships with international humanitarian organizations. Fellows conduct Research Service Learning (RSL) projects in collaboration with their host organizations; recent research initiatives include such topics as HIV/AIDS treatment, domestic violence prevention, and community reconstruction in post-war settings.