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Graduate Program in International Affairs

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By blending theory, practice, and commitment to social responsibility, the Julien J. Studley Graduate Program in International Affairs (GPIA) leads students to analyze urgent international questions through a critical lens. Click here to find out more.

Larissa Ushizima Discusses 2014 Colombia International Field Program Work Designing Ecotourism Initiatives

Larissa FaceLarissa Ushizima, originally from Brazil, is just finishing her last semester in the International Affairs program at The New School. In 2014 Larissa participated in the International Field Program (IFP) to Colombia where she worked with a local government to help strengthen community engagement mechanisms for designing ecotourism initiatives. She applied this work to her thesis, which analyzes tourism-agriculture linkages in Brazil and traveled to Bonito, Brazil during January 2015 to conduct field research after receiving a small award from the Milano School.

 

 

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GPIA Teaching Assistant’s Article About Economics Goes Viral

s200_ingrid.kvangravenIngrid Kvangraven, Economics PhD student and the teaching assistant for GPIA Professor Sakiko Fukuda-Parr’s Development Economics course, wrote a blog post for The New School Economic Review that proceeded to go viral. “How to Justify Teaching the Worst of Economics to Non-Economists” highlights the difficulty in balancing mainstream, criticism of mainstream, and alternative theories in one course when many of the students will never take an economics course again. To date it has been shared via social media over 4,000 times.

 

 

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Alumni Spotlight: Raven Brown

Facebook-20150129-034244Raven Brown is currently a PhD student in the Public and Urban Policy program at Milano and a GPIA alumni. While pursuing a Bachelor’s of Arts degree from Bennington College in social science and ceramics, Raven became immersed in feminist critiques of anthropology and applied those ideas to her sculpture. Through anthropology she learned about the Universal Access to Treatment Campaign and the undue burden illness places on women and children worldwide. While at GPIA, Raven continued to focus on gender and public health in development. She participated in the International Field Program in Johannesburg where she conducted participatory research on gender, economic empowerment, and HIV service provision culminating in her master’s thesis, Bridging the Gap: Innovative Strategies towards Gender Empowerment and HIV Service Provision in Alexandra Township, South Africa A Case Study. After GPIA, Raven worked in Rwanda and Uganda on a research study focusing on the role of women in post-conflict development, peace-building, and HIV service provision. She also pursued a Master’s of Public Health degree from New York University in global health. Working on research based interventions in Belize, Guatemala, Mexico, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda, and Zambia led Raven to realize that she needed to attain a PhD in order to really make a difference by being able to design research informed policies. Her professional experiences solidified her belief that policy processes need to be participatory in order to effectively meet community needs. She plans on conducting her doctoral research on the relationship between poverty reduction and violence prevention as related to gender and housing in countries experiencing rapid urbanization. Examining these links can help build a sustainable and peaceful future. Raven is also a native New Yorker.

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Students Participate in OpenStreetMap Mapping for the Haitian Red Cross

Earlier this month, a cohort of Milano students as well as interested students from across The New School contributed to humanitarian efforts in a rapidly expanding district on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince known as Canaan.  Following the 2010 Haiti earthquake, many families were displaced to this district which unfortunately features very informal, haphazard and failing infrastructure.  Further, the Haitian government does not recognize Canaan as a permanent settlement and thus exempts it from infrastructure services provided by the government.

The Haitian Red Cross sees this district as an increasing risk to its inhabitants and is developing emergency preparation plans and health facilities to especially benefit its most vulnerable populations.  A critical component of this effort is the immediate need for base maps and logistical mapping for this informal, expanding district… and this is where The New School’s mapping project met local humanitarian efforts.

Students getting ready to begin mapping Canaan, Haiti.

Students getting ready to begin mapping Canaan, Haiti.

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GPIA Student’s “Disappearing Elephants” Project

briannaGPIA student Brianna Rowe, together with other Milano students and faculty, have created a project called Disappearing Elephants. The project began as a two-month collaboration between the WWF-Hong Kong and The New School University during the 2014 International Field Placement in Hong Kong. Brianna has continued to work on the project during the school year for her Practicum in International Affairs. In Fall 2014, the website was used to teach a semester-long course called “Disappearing Elephants” at International Community High School in the Bronx. 

Disappearing Elephants is a website that outlines the economic and sociopolitical processes involved in elephant conservation. Through education, the goal is to tell the story of today’s threats to elephants and engage students in the global issues impacting conservation. The website packages media online for users to find information about elephants and the ivory trade, downloadable resources for educators to use in classrooms, an action plan for students to become socially engaged about the topic and a network to connect with others working on these issues.

Approximately 100 African elephants are killed everyday for their ivory. Complex criminal networks run the lucrative underground trade, smuggling illegal ivory through different cities before reaching China’s growing ivory market. Global efforts to control the illegal trafficking of ivory have failed to reduce poaching rates in recent years. Conservationists warn that at the current rates of poaching elephants will be extinct within a couple decades. The Asian elephant population is also highly threatened by human actions, with only 30,000 left.

 

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