Do you need to travel internationally for your graduate research or fieldwork?

The Einaudi Center sponsors international travel for individual Cornell graduate students. If you’re traveling between the United States and a host country for activities directly related to your dissertation or thesis research, Einaudi can help you get there. See full details here.

Register here. Can’t attend? Contact travelgrants@einaudi.cornell.edu to learn more.

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The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies hosts info sessions for graduate and for undergraduate students to learn more about funding opportunities, international travel, research, and internships. View the full calendar of fall semester sessions.

The Laidlaw Leadership and Research Program promotes ethical leadership and international research around the world—starting with the passionate leaders and learners found on campuses like Cornell. Open to first- and second-year students, the two-year Laidlaw program provides generous support to carry out internationally focused research, develop leadership skills, engage with community projects overseas, and become part of a global network of like-minded scholars from twenty universities worldwide.

Register here. Can’t attend? Contact programs@einaudi.cornell.edu to learn more.

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The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies hosts info sessions for graduate and for undergraduate students to learn more about funding opportunities, international travel, research, and internships. View the full calendar of fall semester sessions.

The Laidlaw Scholars Leadership and Research Program promotes ethical leadership and international research around the world—starting with the passionate leaders and learners found on campuses like Cornell. Open to first- and second-year students, the two-year Laidlaw program provides generous support to carry out internationally focused research, develop leadership skills, engage with community projects overseas, and become part of a global network of like-minded scholars from twenty universities worldwide.

Can’t attend? Contact programs@einaudi.cornell.edu to learn more.

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The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies hosts info sessions for graduate and for undergraduate students to learn more about funding opportunities, international travel, research, and internships. View the full calendar of fall semester sessions.

The Predatory Sea: Human Trafficking and Captivity in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025)

Colonialism is often imagined as an imperial project organized by officials at the highest levels of the state. For the earliest English and French colonies in the Caribbean, nothing could be further from the truth. Between 1570 and 1670, a multinational assortment of privately funded ship captains, sailors, merchants, and adventurers engaged in widespread practices of captive-taking and human trafficking throughout the Caribbean. Raids against coastal communities and regional shipping in the region ensnared multitudes, including free and previously enslaved people of African and Indigenous descent, who found themselves trafficked into slavery away from their communities of belonging. Beginning in the 1570s, their captors established maritime bases on small, strategically located islands throughout the region. Those anchorages served as temporary settlements for northern European traffickers decades before their respective monarchs sanctioned official colonies. Colonization thus started with practices of captive-taking and human trafficking, which remained central to the development of the first English and French colonies in the Caribbean.

Through extensive research in Spanish, French, and English archives in Europe and the Caribbean, The Predatory Sea offers a fresh perspective on how captivity and maritime violence shaped early English, French, and Dutch settlement. Drawn from sources across imperial archives, the book reveals the experiences of those ensnared in this trade. Many captives escaped to Spanish population centers, where they testified to officials about what they witnessed in early English, French, and Dutch colonies. Those testimonies informed a series of Spanish attacks on foreign settlements in the Caribbean over the decades leading up to the 1650s. Captives were cause and consequence of inter-imperial competition and warfare during this violent century of Caribbean history. This captive economy, as explicated in The Predatory Sea, shaped English and French colonization, inter-imperial competition, and the lived experiences of captives and their captors.

About the speaker
Casey Schmitt is an Associate Professor of History at Cornell University where she researches and teaches on early modern colonization, mobility, empires, and slavery. Her work has appeared in the Hispanic American Historical Review, Early American Studies, and the William & Mary Quarterly and she has received support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Historical Association, and the Cornell Center for Social Sciences among others.

Host
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, part of the Einaudi Center for International Studies

Come learn more about this spring opportunity with spring break travel, developed in partnership with Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ), National University of Singapore (NUS), and as part of the Jeb E. Brooks School’s Global Policy Exchange Lab. This collaborative online international learning (COIL) and community-based global learning (CBGL) course allows a unique exchange as highlighted the photo essays from our 2025 program. The program invites Cornell students to explore the complexities of education policy and practice in the United States and Ecuador with students and faculty from USFQ and NUS as well as with teachers, administrators, and policy makers in both contexts.

Come learn more about this spring opportunity with spring break travel, developed in partnership with Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ), National University of Singapore (NUS), and as part of the Jeb E. Brooks School’s Global Policy Exchange Lab. This collaborative online international learning (COIL) and community-based global learning (CBGL) course allows a unique exchange as highlighted the photo essays from our 2025 program. The program invites Cornell students to explore the complexities of education policy and practice in the United States and Ecuador with students and faculty from USFQ and NUS as well as with teachers, administrators, and policy makers in both contexts.

Come learn more about this spring opportunity with spring break travel, developed in partnership with Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ), National University of Singapore (NUS), and as part of the Jeb E. Brooks School’s Global Policy Exchange Lab. This collaborative online international learning (COIL) and community-based global learning (CBGL) course allows a unique exchange as highlighted the photo essays from our 2025 program. The program invites Cornell students to explore the complexities of education policy and practice in the United States and Ecuador with students and faculty from USFQ and NUS as well as with teachers, administrators, and policy makers in both contexts.

Go global in summer 2027! Global Internships give you valuable international work experience in fields spanning global development, climate and sustainability, international relations, communication, business, governance, and more.

Applications are open now.

Can’t attend? Contact programs@einaudi.cornell.edu.

***

The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies hosts info sessions for graduate and for undergraduate students to learn more about funding opportunities, international travel, research, and internships. View the full calendar of fall semester sessions.

Go global in summer 2027! Global Internships give you valuable international work experience in fields spanning global development, climate and sustainability, international relations, communication, business, governance, and more.

Applications are open now.

Can’t attend? Contact programs@einaudi.cornell.edu.

***

The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies hosts info sessions for graduate and for undergraduate students to learn more about funding opportunities, international travel, research, and internships. View the full calendar of fall semester sessions.