Global Research

Delegations | Internship Opportunities

As part of their individual research, EPIIC's students are encouraged and enabled to conduct original, policy-oriented research and projects to connect theory to practice and to expose them to the rigors and challenges of a diverse world.

This component of the program is a hands-on experience that has an important and sometimes profound impact on students, challenging their preconceptions about their research hypotheses and about their own and other cultures.

Over the years, EPIIC -- through its network of alumni, advisers, and friends -- has connected numerous students with host organizations and other contacts all over the world, including Azerbaijan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Egypt, England, France, Haiti, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Mexico, Nepal, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, Palestine, Russia, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, and the U.S.

Some past experiences:

EPIIC is now developing this aspect of the program into a multi-year, integrated framework for students to create and participate in a carefully considered plan of study centering on a variety of internships with significant non-governmental, government, corporate and media organizations.

In 2003, in an initiative organized by EPIIC's Natalia Guzman, Institute students Joe Bodell, Kari MacIntyre, and Damaris Medina and Gabriel Koehler worked with Luis Moreno Ocampo, the head of Transparency International for Latin America on an asset recovery project that was highly praised and recently presented at the anti-corruption summit in Seoul, South Korea. As the newly named chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Ocampo will be selecting Institute students for internships in 2004 with the ICC.

In 1999 EPIIC students Tamy Guberek and Kristin Cibelli spent November and December conducting interviews throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina. Using rigorous statistical methods, in an effort to determine how non governmental organizations(NGOs) perceived the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, Tamy and Kristen interviewed 54 local NGOs in the winter of 1999 about not only the ICTY, but also the proposed Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Their report Justice Unknown, Justice Unsatisfied? Bosnian NGOs Speak about the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia was the first comprehensive survey of local NGO opinion about the ICTY.

In 1998, two sophomores and one junior -- from Georgia, Greece, and Singapore -- travelled to Baku, Azerbaijan to try to understand the political and economic corruption surrounding the development of Caspian Sea oil resources. They met with oil executives, journalists, and politicians and were hosted by an EPIIC alumnus who had gone to Kyrgyzstan in 1995 on his own EPIIC project.

In 1997, a junior travelled to the United Arab Emirates to research labor migration and citizenship laws, interviewing employers and migrant laborers. She presented her findings at the 1998 symposium on refugees, migration, and global security.

In 1996, two students -- a senior and a freshman -- volunteered for one month with Mercy Corps International/Scottish European Aide in Sarajevo, where they assisted with a conflict negotiation workshop for Bosnians among other conflict resolution projects. They also met with local political leaders in communities surrounding Sarajevo to try to help them come to agreement on forming executive boards in compliance with the Dayton Peace Accords. Some of the photographs from their trip were used to document the assertion of cultural genocide at the International Court of Justice.

In 1992, two students -- a sophomore and senior -- travelled to the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua to study transborder peace parks, the relationship between indigenous peoples and the environment, and the theory of conservation by self-determination. They interviewed Miskito leader Brooklyn Rivera, leaders of Mikupia (the Miskito environmental NGO), and the Miskito people.

Download and read an overview of 2002-2003 research projects undertaken by EPIIC and Institute students.

EPIIC Delegations

Over the years, EPIIC has sent a number of student delegations to conferences as presenters and participants.

In 2002, students from EPIIC's "Global Inequities" year successfully organized to have the Institute recognized as an educational NGO with the United Nations. They went to Johannesburg, South Africa to participate in the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Rio+10). Here is a brief summary of their achievements and accomplishments.

In 1999, seven EPIIC students participated in "The Global Meeting of Generations: Vision and Action for Equitable Development in the 21st Century," the bi-annual forum of the International Development Conference.

EPIIC's 1996 CD-Rom project -- Beyond Intolerance: Reconciliation and Reconstruction in Beirut, Belfast, Jerusalem, and Sarajevo, from the "Religion, Politics, and Society" theme, was presented at the United Nations Human Settlements Conference in Istanbul in June 1996 by five EPIIC students.

In 1994, two EPIIC students attended the Stockholm Roundtable to present their research at the PrepCom for the United Nations "World Summit for Social Development." They were the only undergraduates presenting at this invitation-only United Nations Development Study Programme forum, which was attended by 160 distinguished international scholars and officials.

In 1993, 12 of EPIIC's students gave presentations on "What Do Young People Think about International Development Cooperation?" at the annual meeting of executive directors of non-governmental organizations accredited to the United Nations in New York. It was chaired by Dr. Uner Kirdar, the director of the Development Study Programme at the United Nations Development Programme.

In 1992, at the invitation of Noel Brown, Regional Director of the United Nations Environment Programme, EPIIC sent five students to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The students presented their original video on environmental security at the Global Forum '92, the gathering of non-governmental organizations.

Internship Opportunities

As part of our effort to create substantive legacies linked to recipients of EPIIC's Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award, we have begun to develop specially designed internships and research opportunities for Institute and Tufts students. Last year, senior Kate Davenport won an EPIIC/Americans for Democratic Action internship, which will be offered again this year.

The International Crisis Group has offered the following internships and positions honoring the award to its director, Gareth Evans.

General Romeo Dallaire who is conducting research on child soldiers and Ronald Noble, Secretary-General of Interpol, are working with EPIIC on new research and internship opportunities as well. The Interpol internships will also be offered to Balfour scholars at the University.

Michael Johnstone, the current chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, who spoke for EPIIC several years ago as part of its Humanity in Action Fellowship program, is creating internships at The Hague for several EPIIC students. Sarah Berger and Ben Harburg are the first beneficiaries.

Photojournalist James Nachtwey, who covered the second war in Iraq for Time Magazine in Baghdad, has taken several interns to work directly with him in his New York studio, and Cornelio Sommaragu will take several interns for work with the International Committee for the Red Cross and with the Moral Rearmament Initiative in Europe.

Reactions

Sean Love
EPIIC '95, currently the bureau chief for Internews Service in Azerbaijan

 

"When most students were writing term papers over winter break, I was working on my own "class project" for EPIIC: a documentary film I shot on location in Kyrgyzstan. Kyrgyzstan was having the first democratic elections in its history and I wanted to document them. But as a 21-year old student with no film making experience, I had a hard time convincing grant givers I was a good investment.

"In EPIIC, I plugged into its extensive network of alumni and contacts. Within weeks, an alum at the State Department had gotten me an interview with Kyrgyzstan's foreign minister. Soon after, he helped me get a diplomatic visa.

"For three weeks I crisscrossed the country with a candidate for parliament, sometimes in a beat up van, sometimes on horseback. I talked to U.N. elections monitors, collective farmers who had lost everything, members of the old Soviet parliament, and 20-somethings who were thriving on the chaos around them. The transition was having a profound effect on everybody's lives. In those three weeks, I learned more about what was going on in post-Soviet Central Asia than I did in a whole summer engrossed in books on the subject.

"That's why EPIIC is unique. Students are given the opportunity to address the essence of an issue, not their professor's interpretation of it. They're encouraged to seek out primary sources, not someone else's analysis. In the process, the line between the classroom and the real world blurs. Let students loose, head them in the right direction, and it's amazing what they will find."

Brian Kaplan
EPIIC'92, participated in EPIIC during his senior year at Tufts when the program explored "International Security: The Environmental Dimension;" Graduated from Georgetown Law School and is working for a Boston law firm

"When I graduated, my relationship with EPIIC did not end. EPIIC helped me and four other students in the program travel to Rio de Janeiro for the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development. It was a terrific way to begin a post-college life -- take the subject I had studied inside and out, and see how world leaders and NGOs address it at the largest international gathering in history. It is a testimony to EPIIC that I never felt in the dark on issues and debates at the Earth Summit.

"EPIIC is also largely responsible for my job at The Boston Globe. Upon my return from Rio, I began working for the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist and associate editor Stan Grossfeld. Stan had attended the EPIIC symposium and asked several students to assist him with research for a project proposal. When the project, "The Exhausted Earth," was approved, I became Stan's researcher.

"EPIIC did not only help me to obtain the job, it also prepared me for it. The emphasis on thorough research and on seeking out key debates and questions; the importance given to skepticism; and the exposure to speaking with people that might be intimidating, were all invaluable to my work at the newspaper. I was also privileged enough to travel to Madagascar for three weeks with Stan to see the dilemmas of environment, poverty, and development -- which I had studied in EPIIC -- played out in one of the most eroded and poorest countries of the world."

Stan Grossfeld
Editor and Pulitzer Prize-winning Photojournalist, The Boston Globe

"Students today lack passion. They know how to get good grades, yet are sadly lacking in concern for the larger issues which will face them in the 21st century. EPIIC's students are the exception. They look at the big picture...Their work showed a sensitive understanding of the problems facing the world as it nears the millennium. It was timely, well-researched, diverse...This is a fantastic opportunity to get our future leaders involved on grassroots levels with both government and non-governmental agencies."