In this seminar, we will explore promising avenues to improve the science policy interface in Africa. The seminar will cover multiple themes under this broad umbrella, including (a) reviews of productive modes of interfacing science and policy, (b) detailed explorations of the policy-making process in the region, including current obstacles to building strong S/P interfaces, (c) efforts to train the region’s scientists in policy communication, (d) the role of mass media, new media and civil society in the process, (e) the role of national and regional think-tanks, (f) advocacy efforts directed at policy-makers to promote an evidence-based culture.

Eleana Kim (Anthropology, UC Irvine)

This book talk discusses Eleana Kim’s recently published ethnography of the ecologies of the South Korean borderlands, in areas adjacent the Korean Demilitarized Zone. Based on fieldwork with ecologists, environmentalists, and residents who live along the border, this book reframes the Korean DMZ and the national division around more-than-human peace. It also argues that militarized ecologies deserve greater attention in the context of climate crisis and the convergence of militarization and privatization at a planetary scale. BIO: Eleana Kim is a sociocultural anthropologist and professor of anthropology and Asian American Studies at University of California, Irvine. She is the author of Making Peace with Nature: Ecological Encounters along the Korean DMZ (2022) and Adopted Territory: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Politics of Belonging (2010), both published by Duke University Press. She currently serves as the president of the Society for Cultural Anthropology.

In this seminar, we will explore promising avenues to improve the science policy interface in Africa. The seminar will cover multiple themes under this broad umbrella, including (a) reviews of productive modes of interfacing science and policy, (b) detailed explorations of the policy-making process in the region, including current obstacles to building strong S/P interfaces, (c) efforts to train the region’s scientists in policy communication, (d) the role of mass media, new media and civil society in the process, (e) the role of national and regional think-tanks, (f) advocacy efforts directed at policy-makers to promote an evidence-based culture.

Dr. Jacqueline Kitulu, MD, MBA, OGW, is a current Chairperson of the Board of Rocket Health, which offers telemedicine healthcare services in Kampala. She also served as a prior President of the Kenya Medical Association, and the first female Chair of this umbrella organization of doctors and dentists in Kenya. Dr. Kitulu earned her MBBS (Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery) from the University of Nairobi and her MBA in Healthcare Management from Strathmore Business School. Dr. Kitulu has dedicated her life to working to transform healthcare in Kenya and globally. She has been instrumental in building local and global partnerships as well as coalitions to enhance policy advocacy in the health space and to accelerate access to quality and affordable healthcare for all. She has served and continues to serve on the boards of various other medical organizations shaping healthcare strategies and policies as well as in non-medical organizations where she provides medical expertise on health governance and program issues.

In this seminar, we will explore promising avenues to improve the science policy interface in Africa. The seminar will cover multiple themes under this broad umbrella, including (a) reviews of productive modes of interfacing science and policy, (b) detailed explorations of the policy-making process in the region, including current obstacles to building strong S/P interfaces, (c) efforts to train the region’s scientists in policy communication, (d) the role of mass media, new media and civil society in the process, (e) the role of national and regional think-tanks, (f) advocacy efforts directed at policy-makers to promote an evidence-based culture.

This takes the position that, The Critical Success Factor in the Science to Policy Interface is the Overall Policy Process. By contrasting and comparing various national and corporate policy development & deployment processes, this presentation examines this perspectives via two questions

Is the scientific credibility tested when embedding theories & stratagems into policy? Is the Policy Development & Deployment Process itself scientifically credible?

Host Nation by Ko-woon Lee (2016, 116 minutes)

“Do you want to work in Korea?” Thus begins twenty-six-year-old Filipina woman Maria’s two-year journey into the sex industry in South Korea, which mainly caters to American soldiers stationed there.

Host Nation chronicles Maria’s hopes, dreams, and crucial reality for two years to lay bare the legalized system of sex trafficking between South Korea and the Philippines. Maria had long dreamed about escaping from her slum neighborhood in Davao, Philippines, and getting a job abroad and when she was introduced to a talent manager, Madam Yolie, it seemed her dream was about to come true.

Yolie, who operates a training center and a temporary boarding house in Manila for women, has witnessed the ups and downs of the sex industries of neighboring Asian countries and sees the openings in the industry as job opportunities for poor Filipino women.

The documentary follows Maria’s pathway into the South Korean sex industry via the E-6 visa, the so-called “entertainers’ visa,” slowly revealing the vast network of cross-border profit makers who enable sex trafficking, including a talent scout, a manager in Manila, a Korean broker, a Korean club owner and even Korean government agencies.

Part of the series Power of Seeing 보는 이의 권력 hosted by the East Asia Program at the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.

Film website: www.koreanfilm.or.kr/eng/films/index/filmsView.jsp?movieCd=20164198

In Korean, Tagalog and English with English subtitles.

Generously cosponsored by the Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies and the Cornell Society for the Humanities.

The Woman, the Orphan, and the Tiger by Jane Jin Kaisen & Guston Sondin-Kung (2010, 72 min)

Following a group of international adoptees and other women of the Korean diaspora in their 20s and 30s, the film uncovers how the return of the repressed confronts and destabilizes narratives that have been constructed to silence histories of pain and violence inflicted onto the bodies and lives of women and children.

Film website: janejinkaisen.com/the-woman-the-orphan-and-the-tiger

In English, Korean and Danish with English subtitles

Part of the series Power of Seeing 보는 이의 권력 hosted by the East Asia Program at the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.

Generously co-sponsored by the Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies and the Cornell Society for the Humanities.

As part of Mann Library’s Sustainable Fashion programming for the month of April, the Cornell and Ithaca area public are warmly invited to a screening of a documentary film co-directed by professor of communication and feminist, gender & sexuality studies Katherine Sender. Threads: Sustaining India’s Textile Tradition follows the stories of fashion designers and fabric artisans as they transform traditional textile practices for contemporary fashion markets. The film features interviews with designers in Delhi and Jaipur; hand weavers in Chanderi, 350 miles south of New Delhi; bandhani tie-dyers in Bhuj, in India’s north west; and block printers near Jaipur in Rajasthan. As conversations with designers and artisans featured in the documentary illustrate, their ongoing partnerships not only present promising implications for environmental stewardship and workers’ lives, they are also reinvigorating traditional textile techniques and the communities who produce them.

A Q & A discussion with professor Sender will follow the screening.

Mann Library is pleased to present "Threads" as part of the "Threads of History: Textiles Across Cornell" programming occurring on the Cornell campus in. 2022/2023. Other events taking place at Mann Library as part of this programming include:

"Threading the Needle: Weaving Tradition Into Contemporary Textile Art," an exhibit in the Mann Library Gallery, March 23 - August 2023. (Opening reception: Thursday, March 23)"Sustaining Style: Towards Responsible Fashion," exhibit in the Mann Lobby, March 23 - September 15, 2023. Clothing Exchange in collaboration with Cornell Thrift (Mann Lobby, Thurs, April 13). Sew Creative: A Hands-on Workshop on the Techniques of Stitching (Mann Room 102, Friday, April 14; 12:00 - 2:00 p.m.; registration required).19th Century Woven Coverlets: The Finger Lakes Story (Mann Room 160, Thursday, May 4, 4:00 p.m.)Fiber Arts Stressbuster - displays & activities with natural dyes & stamps, Friday, May 12, 11:00 a.m.- 2:00 p.m. Check mann.library.cornell.edu for more details and updates on additional programming.

Tour of Duty by Kim Dong-ryung and Park Kyoung-tae (2 hours 30 min. 2012)

There remains only silence in a US military camp town in the northern part of Gyeonggi province which will be pulled down any time soon.

In the town, three women are still living with pains engraved in their bodies. Aunt Bobby who used to make burgers in Seonyu-ri for 30 years; Ms. Insoon Park who used to collect scraps and draw paintings on them in the abandoned narrow alleys of Bbat-bul, Uijeongbu; and Ms. Sungja Ahn who is half-Korean and half-African American. Following the pieces of their memories, the film travels into the forgotten town to reveal the truth left behind.

This documentary by Kim Dong-ryung and Park Kyoung-tae chronicles the lives of three women impacted by the US military presence in South Korea. The Seonyu-ri red light district located at the Paju U.S. military camp town became a well-known site after the Korean War. Now awaiting its fate to be demolished, this film sets out on a trip through time and space in this place where certain memories and people have long departed and others still linger.

In Korean with English subtitles.

Film website: www.dmzdocs.com/eng/addon/00000002/history_film_view.asp?m_idx=101967&Q…

Part of the series Power of Seeing 보는 이의 권력 hosted by the East Asia Program at the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.

We thank the generous co-sponsorship of the following:

The Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies

The Cornell Society for the Humanities

Learn more about the migrations research happening across campus at this research forum, hosted by the Migrations initiative. In three-minute, lightning round presentations, migration researchers and practitioners will share the progress of their interdisciplinary projects that have been funded by Migrations.

Projects

1. Risk or Refuge: Inequality in Exposure to Environmental Vulnerability in California
Kendra Bischoff, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology
Linda Shi, Assistant Professor, City and Regional Planning, Architecture Art and Planning

2. Linking Impacts of Narco-trafficking in Central America to Overwintering Migratory Birds
Amanda Rodewald, Garvin Professor, Natural Resources and the Environment

3. Caribbean Studies at Cornell: A Proposal for Curriculum Development
Ernesto Bassi, Associate Professor, Department of History
Judith Byfield, Professor, Department of History

4. Multicultural Cooperative Land Governance and Farming
Scott Peters, Professor, Department of Global Development
Christa Nunez, PhD student, Development Studies, Department of Global Development
Antonisha Owens, Community Research Partner
Stephen Henhawk, Gayogohó:nǫˀ Speaker, Teacher, and Historian
Michelle Seneca, Project Leader of the Gayogohó:nǫˀ Learning Project

5. Collaborations with Farmworkers to Address Racial Inequalities: Advocating for Legal, Workplace, and Health Justice
Mary Jo Dudley, Director of the Cornell Farmworker Program
Yesica Corona, Master of Public Health candidate

6. Barely Tolerated: An Ethnographic Film about Life in Uncertain Refuge and Deferred Deportation
Saida Hodžić, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology

7. Refugees Know Things: A Podcast Series and an Installation
Saida Hodžić, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology

8. The Sound of Silence: Mapping Immigrants’ Preferences and Use of Public Space through Social Media: Toward an Inclusive Design and Management of the Urban Commons
Maria Goula, Professor, Landscape Architecture
Cristobal Cheyre, Assistant Professor, Department of Information Science
Duarte Santo, Lecturer, Landscape Architecture

9. Possible Landscapes: Documenting Environmental Experience in Trinidad and Tobago
Natalie Melas, Associate Professor, Department of Literatures in English
Tao DuFour, Assistant Professor, Architecture

10. Displaced and Uprooted: Stories of Belonging, Central American TPS Workers' Defiant Struggle for their Right to Stay Home in the U.S.
Ileen DeVault, Professor, Labor Relations, Law, and History

11. Xenophobia Meter Project: Tracking Xenophobic Twitter Speech to Inform (and Shift) Policy
Beth Lyon, Clinical Professor of Law, Cornell Law School

12. Critical Perspectives: Racism, Xenophobia, and Im/migration
Beth Lyon, Clinical Professor of Law, Cornell Law School

13. From Invasive Others toward Embracing Each Other: Migration, Dispossession, and Place-Based Knowledge in the Arts of the Americas
Jolene Rickard, Associate Professor, Department of History Art and Visual Studies

14. Grassroots Transnational Networks Fortifying Salvadoran Rural Communities: From Santa Marta to Ithaca
Sofia A. Villenas, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology

15. Food Beyond Borders: Visions of Hunting and Fishing in the Myanmar Diaspora
Kathryn Fiorella, Assistant Professor, Department of Public & Ecosystem Health
Nicole Tu-Muang, PhD student in Natural Resources and the Environment

Learn more about their Migrations projects on our website.

Professor Fabien Nkot is the Secretary General, Ministry of Secondary Education (MINESEC), former Special Advisor to the Prime Minister, Republic of Cameroon, and University Professor, Public Law and Political Science, University of Yaounde 2, Republic of Cameroon.

The IAD Special Topic Seminar Series explores promising avenues to improve the science policy interface in Africa. The seminar will cover multiple themes under this broad umbrella, including (a) reviews of productive modes of interfacing science and policy, (b) detailed explorations of the policy-making process in the region, including current obstacles to building strong S/P interfaces, (c) efforts to train the region’s scientists in policy communication, (d) the role of mass media, new media and civil society in the process, (e) the role of national and regional think-tanks, (f) advocacy efforts directed at policy-makers to promote an evidence-based culture.