Einaudi Center for International Studies
Global Internships

Details
Gain valuable international experience with a Global Internship! As an intern, you'll meet mentors and colleagues working in the international arena and advance your career goals.
Our Global Internships span the globe with placements at Cornell Global Hubs partner universities, community nonprofits and NGOs, and global practitioners partnering with Einaudi's regional and thematic programs. We offer internships specializing in global development, climate and sustainability, international relations, communication, business, governance, and more.
The application deadline for this opportunity has passed.
Funding Amount
All Global Interns receive an award totaling at least $3,000 for airfare, transportation, and living expenses. A portion of the stipend may be paid directly to the in-country host to support housing, food, and local transportation. Find specific funding information under the "cost" tab on each internship’s Experience page. The stipend fully funds the estimated total cost.
How to Apply
Find out how to apply then continue exploring internship options and start your application on Experience.
Deadline and Decision
The application deadline is extended to January 15 for select opportunities. Explore internship options below. If you applied by December 15, you'll hear from us with a decision and next steps no later than February 15.
Questions?
Joshua Kennedy is the Global Internships advisor. Select "Global Internships" in Cornell Chatter to schedule an appointment. You can also reach out by email with questions.
Where Will You Go?
Africa
Global Internship: Food Security and Climate Resilience in Malawi
Ekwendeni, Malawi
Latin America
Global Internship: Research in Mexico
Monterrey, Mexico
East Asia
South Asia
Global Internship: Digital Humanities in India
Kolkata, India
South Asia Program
Global Internship: Research in India
Sonipat, India
South Asia Program
Southeast Asia
Global Internship: Communications in Cambodia
Siem Reap, Cambodia
Southeast Asia Program
Global Internship: Library Support in Cambodia
Siem Reap, Cambodia
Southeast Asia Program
Additional Information
Funding Type
- Internship
Role
- Student
Biochar from Human Waste Could Solve Global Fertilizer Shortages, Study Finds

Johannes Lehmann, LACS
Johannes Lehmann, professor in the soil and crop sciences section, discusses the benefits of recycling human and animal excreta.
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The Day with Phil Gayle

Natasha Suresh Raheja, SAP
Natasha Suresh Raheja, assistant professor of anthropology, discusses the relationship between Christians and Hindus in South Asia.
Additional Information
Bolivia’s Election May Spell The End of its Long-Ruling Left. Here’s What to Know

Gustavo Flores-Macías, LACS
Gustavo Flores-Macías, professor of government, discusses Bolivia's Movement Toward Socialism political party.
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Why UK’s Working-Class Voters are Embracing MAGA-Like Politics

Mabel Berezin, IES
Mabel Berezin, a sociologist and director of Cornell University’s Institute for European Studies, provides insight into the emotional and economic reasons behind the rise of populism in Europe.
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An Islamic Emperor Without Clothes: From Iran's Revolutionary Process to the Unraveling of the "Axis of Resistance" - Challenging Long-Held Assumptions about the Islamic Republic

October 9, 2025
12:00 pm
This lecture explores the complex dynamics reshaping the Islamic Republic of Iran, drawing on the findings of years-long research that challenges conventional assumptions about the country’s domestic stability and foreign power. Since 2018, Iran has arguably experienced a “long-term revolutionary process” culminating in the 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising. Four interconnected crises—economic, ecological, gender, and political—are fueling this revolutionary process, revealing a state whose apparent stability masks deep volatility.
Internationally, Iran’s long-standing strategy of leveraging managed conflict with the West and forging partnerships with China and Russia has proven fragile. The unraveling of Tehran’s “Axis of Resistance” following “October 7” and the latest June 2025 12-Day War with Israel dramatically weakened the Islamic Republic’s regional influence and credibility.
The lecture examines how entrenched narratives—authoritarian stability, rural and lower-class regime loyalty, the reformist–conservative dichotomy, and regional invincibility—fail to explain Tehran’s current challenges. By analyzing the interplay between domestic pressures and foreign-policy miscalculations, this talk offers a fresh understanding of a regime at a historic crossroads.
About the speaker
Dr. (PhD) Ali Fathollah-Nejad is a German–Iranian political scientist and author, working at the intersection of Middle East politics, international relations, and development studies. He is Founder and Director of the Center for Middle East and Global Order (CMEG), a research network and voluntary-based think-tank devoted to exploring regional and global transformations, while promoting a new Western foreign policy that reconciles interests and values. He teaches Middle East politics and international security at the Hertie School – The University of Governance in Berlin. Among his publications are, most recently, the much-acclaimed (“best 10 books” of spring 2025, Der Tagespiegel daily) Iran – How the West is Betraying its Values and Interests [in German], The Islamic Republic in Existential Crisis (2023, European Union Institute for Security Studies), the much-acclaimed book Iran in an Emerging New World Order (2021, Palgrave), and The Islamic Republic of Iran Four Decades On (2020, Brookings), where he suggested the start of a long-term revolutionary process in Iran. Fathollah-Nejad is also the former Iran expert of the Brookings Institution in Doha, the German Council on Foreign Relations, and the American University of Beirut, as well as a 2022 McCloy Fellow on Global Trends of the American Council on Germany (ACG). He holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Development Studies at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) and was the winner of the 2016/17 post-doctoral fellowship of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Iran Project. He has taught, among others, at universities in London, Berlin, Doha, Tübingen, and Prague. The author of around 300 articles in English, German and French – with translations into a dozen other languages –, Fathollah-Nejad is also a frequent commentator for leading outlets across the globe.
Host
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, part of the Einaudi Center for International Studies
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies
Shadow Knowledge and the Politics of Indistinction in Mexico’s Drug War

October 7, 2025
12:20 pm
G08, Uris Hall
This talk explores an unconventional form in which knowledge on Mexico's "war on drug trafficking" is produced and circulates, and the kind of symptomatic reading that it performs. By analyzing two such instances—a journalist's testimony on her experience of drug-war violence before a federal government committee and a protest of relatives of the war's victims—I examine how this form of shadow knowledge operates through simultaneous concealment and revelation, illuminating key contradictions at the core of the drug war—the large-scale militarized combat of drug trafficking organizations that began in 2006. While this conflict's structuring logic follows the principles of the US security state—including the designation of an external enemy that threatens the national community and must be fought militarily—its unfolding within the Mexican territory reveals the impossibility of such a designation. Instead, as I will explore in this talk, those discursive articulations outline the symptoms of a new kind of state formation that has emerged in Mexico's drug war: an entity that makes itself felt through the traces of its extralegal violence. Those traces, I will argue, point to two kinds of indistinction: first, that between the state and its criminal enemy—el narco—and second, that between such an enemy and the national community the state was supposed to protect.
Agnes Mondragón-Celis is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Rochester. Her research explores the forms of knowledge production and circulation that emerge in contexts of generalized violence and opacity. She analyzes the psychosocial and performative effects of these forms of mediation, including how they sustain or challenge political authority. Her work has been published in American Anthropologist, Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, and Anthropology News.
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Latin American and Caribbean Studies
A Postcolonial Theory of Free Speech

December 4, 2025
12:15 pm
Kahin Center
Gatty Lecture Series
Join us for a talk by Kevin D. Pham from the University of Amsterdam, who will discuss theories of free speech among Vietnamese revolutionaries.
This Gatty Lecture will take place at the The Kahin Center, 640 Stewart Ave. Lunch will be served. For questions, contact seapgatty@cornell.edu.
Abstract
In this presentation, Kevin D. Pham shows how revolutionaries in Vietnam debated the value of free speech. Drawing on the writings of the Nhân Văn-Giai Phẩm (NVGP), a movement of intellectuals who proclaimed support for free speech and communist revolution in North Vietnam in the late 1950s, Pham shows how the NVGP defend free speech as a collective, rather than individual, right and as something that can invigorate the Party so that it can more effectively guide the people towards socialism. They argue that free speech can: 1) help the Party redress their mistakes, 2) identify what is good and bad for the people, and 3) create a socialism that celebrates human diversity. Departing from theories of free speech that emphasize the individual, the NVGP’s theory overlaps with theories that emphasize free speech’s benefits for society. But whereas John Stuart Mill—the eminent defender of free speech—was concerned with conformity, the NVGP was concerned with declining trust between the Party and the people. And whereas Marxist theories of free speech tend to focus on how free speech can help the oppressed win power, the NVGP focuses on how free speech can help socialist transition after winning power. Ultimately, the NVGP offer us a postcolonial theory of free speech, one that presents freedom of speech as the key to long lasting freedom after achieving independence from colonialism.
About the Speaker
Kevin D. Pham is Assistant Professor of Political Theory at the University of Amsterdam. His research explores how theories of democracy, freedom, and revolution travel across cultures and are adapted by activists and intellectuals responding to colonialism and postcolonial nation building. His book, The Architects of Dignity: Vietnamese Visions of Decolonization (Oxford University Press, 2024), is the first to introduce Vietnamese political thought to the field of political theory. His articles appear in journals such as Theory & Event, European Journal of Political Theory, Review of Politics, Polity, and Philosophy and Global Affairs, among others. He co-hosts two podcasts (Nam Phong Dialogues and Viet History Makers) that make Vietnamese history accessible to a broad public.
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Southeast Asia Program
10,000 Years of Versatility: Exploring the Diversity and Legacy of the Bottle Gourd

November 13, 2025
12:15 pm
Kahin Center
Gatty Lecture Series
Join us for a talk by Marlie Lukach, PhD student in Plant Breeding and Genetics, who will discuss lagenaria siceraria, the bottle gourd.
This Gatty Lecture will take place at the The Kahin Center, 640 Stewart Ave. Lunch will be served. For questions, contact seapgatty@cornell.edu.
Abstract
Lagenaria siceraria, commonly known as bottle gourd, is a crop of immense historical significance, as one of the first domesticated crops, with its use dating back over 10,000 years. Its journey across almost every continent, adapting to a diverse range of climates and overcoming abiotic and biotic stressors, is a testament to its remarkable adaptability and diversity. The early interest in bottle gourd may have stemmed from its versatility: the immature fruits, leaves, stems, and flowers are edible, while the mature fruit’s hard rind can be used for storage vessels, tools, musical instruments, amulets, or art. Despite this adaptability and importance for early humans, there is a pressing need for further research to better understand the adaptability, diversity, and cultural importance of bottle gourds. This study employs a three-part approach to provide resources for advancing discovery, investigating global diversity, and preserving bottle gourds. Objective 1 focuses on understanding the cultural importance of bottle gourds. In collaboration with Cornell University’s Southeast Asia Program and Kasetsart University in Thailand, we explore the cultural significance of bottle gourds in Southeast Asian countries. Objective 2 aims to improve the sharing of scientific knowledge of bottle gourd by creating a crop ontology to help standardize data collection. This collaborative effort includes researchers from the US, Thailand, and Turkey working on bottle gourds. Lastly, Objective 3 centers on enhancing our understanding of the phenotypic and genotypic diversity of bottle gourds globally using bottle gourd germplasm from 19 countries held in the USDA National Plant Germplasm System
About the Speaker
Marlie Lukach is a 6th-year PhD student in the Plant Breeding and Genetics Program working in the Jean-Luc Jannink Lab. She grew up not far from Ithaca in Endicott, NY. While she lived in a rural area, she went to school in town. Growing up in both settings, Marlie learned how disconnected these worlds can be and worked on reconnecting them with her involvement in 4H at the local, state, and national levels. Marlie completed her Bachelor's degrees at Cornell University in Agricultural Science and International Agriculture and Rural Development in 2020.
From these two programs, she developed a passion for underutilized crops across the globe.
During Marlie’s time in the Plant Breeding and Genetics Program, she has worked on a variety of projects such as heavy metal accumulation in winter squash for baby food markets, carbohydrate accumulation of winter squash, and building models using handheld near-infrared (NIR) spectrometers to predict quality traits in winter squash. But, her passion has driven her to pursue an overarching objective of how to make underutilized crops more accessible while helping to preserve biodiversity. Marlie has worked in partnership with the USDA to trial a variety of underutilized cucurbits, which include squashes, cucumbers, melons, watermelons, and, of course, gourds, to better understand how they perform in temperate climates, as well as traveling to Thailand to explore the cultural connections and diversity of gourds present in Southeast Asia.
Outside of research, Marlie is an active member of SEAP, serving as a committee member for the planning of the 2025 SEAP Grad Conference and as the building coordinator for the Kahin Center. And, in her free time is an avid equestrian and goat farmer.
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Southeast Asia Program
Champassak Royalty and Sovereignty: Within and Between Nation States in Mainland Southeast Asia

September 18, 2025
12:15 pm
Kahin Center
Gatty Lecture Series
Join us for a talk by Ian Baird from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who will discuss the nuances of sovereignty as constructed by Champassak royals.
This Gatty Lecture will take place at the The Kahin Center, 640 Stewart Ave. Lunch will be served. For questions, contact seapgatty@cornell.edu.
Abstract
The House of Champassak was established, in 1713, by an important Buddhist monk from Vientiane named Phra Khou Phonsamek, who supported Chao Nokasat (Chao Soyisamouth), an estranged Vientiane royal, to become the first king of Champassak. However, Champassak only remained an independent sovereign power until 1778, when it was forced to become a vassal of Siam. Since then, the House of Champassak has always had to maneuver and negotiate to maintain varying degrees of sovereign power, whether it be with the Thais, Cambodians, French, the Royal Lao government, or others. In my new book, Champassak Royalty and Sovereignty (University of Wisconsin Press, 2025), I consider the ways that the House of Champassak has both asserted different sovereign claims and achieved diverse kinds of sovereign power—both formally and informally—and has developed different practices that have helped them obtain varying degrees of sovereign power. The book is not bounded by modern nation states, and therefore considers Champassak royals in Champassak-proper, in present-day southern Laos, but also in northeastern Thailand, northeastern Cambodia, and in Europe and North America, where most of the family has settled since the communist takeover of Laos in 1975. Crucially, I argue that sovereignty is fundamentally contingent and always in flux, thus requiring constant efforts—either explicit or more subtle—to reinforce, construct and reproduce various fields of sovereignty.
About the Speaker
Ian G. Baird is a Professor of Geography and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has various interests and mainly conducts research in Laos, Thailand and northeastern Cambodia. His recent books include Champassak Royalty and Sovereignty: Within and Between Nation-States in mainland Southeast Asia (University of Wisconsin Press, 2025), Thailand’s Volunteer Hill Tribe Militia (1970-1983): An Under- Recognized Anti-Communist Force (White Lotus Press, 2024), and Rise of the Brao: Ethnic Minorities in Northeastern Cambodia during Vietnamese Occupation (University of Wisconsin Press, 2020).
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Southeast Asia Program