What role do regular people play in the criminal justice system? This is the fundamental question behind 2016 Lois Roth award winner Anna Offit’s dissertation research. In order to gain a comparative international perspective, she is spending the 2015-16 academic year at the University of Oslo working on her Fulbright project, “The jury is out: An Ethnographic Study of Lay Participation in Norway.”
As the project title suggests, Offit’s field is Anthropology. She also has a law degree and a keen interest in how the criminal justice system works in practice. Norway, which is about to reform and possibly eliminate its jury system, was a natural place for Offit to conduct field research. By observing trials and interviewing lawyers, judges, and politicians, she seeks to understand how those who oversee and implement the justice system view lay participation in it. In particular, she wonders how those views affect the way the system functions and what reforms might be made.
The Lois Roth award provides funding  for student Fulbright grantees in the humanities, social sciences, and the visual and performing arts to augment their projects. With Lois Roth award support, Offit will be able to expand her fieldwork to Tromsø in northern Norway. In addition to increasing the number of legal actors Offit can interview and observe, a stay in Tromsø will allow her to explore questions of jury representativeness as they pertain to the indigenous Sami population. 
The Lois Roth Endowment, established to honor the life of the diplomat for whom it is named, seeks to promote “….dialogue across national, linguistic, disciplinary and cultural boundaries, focusing on countries that were especially important to Lois in her life and career.”  Roth was a Fulbright grantee in Sweden and worked at the American Scandinavian Foundation before starting her career in the Foreign Service. By presenting an award to a Fulbright grantee in Norway every year, the Endowment pays tribute to Roth’s experiences, interests, and passions including her particular fondness for the Nordic countries.