This lecture discusses the concept of peace agreements as platforms for constructive social change, which requires authentic engagement and institutional transformations. It posits that signing peace accords is an important yet, alone and by itself, an insufficient step towards peacebuilding. Rather, the challenge of peacebuilding after wars lies in a robust implementation of the commitments reached at the negotiation table. Dialogue and inclusion during the negotiations needs to be permanent and continued after the signature. This lecture discusses these aspects in particular in the Colombian case, and highlights the role of third-party monitors in accompanying the process.

About the speaker

Josefina Echavarría Álvarez is professor of the practice and the director of the Peace Accords Matrix (PAM) program at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, part of the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. She leads PAM’s researchers, faculty and staff in the South Bend campus, as well as PAM’s field units that carry out official monitoring of the implementation of peace accords in real time. In Colombia, PAM’s Barometer Initiative carries out official monitoring of the entire 2016 Final Peace Agreement between the Colombian government and the former FARC-EP guerrillas. In the Philippines, in partnership with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) Philippines, PAM-Mindanao provides monitoring methodology and technical assistance to measure the progress of the Normalization Annex of the 2014 agreement between the Government of the Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). Josefina also directs the Legacy Project for “Preserving and Engaging the Digital Archive of the Colombian Truth Commission", which guarantees continued access to more than 200,000 files including audiovisual, non-textual knowledge and digitized documents compiled by the Colombian Truth Commission.

Host

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

Lund Critical Debate

Since January 2025, the United States has slashed billions in international aid—and effectively dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), responsible for administering U.S. development and humanitarian aid around the world. In what has become the largest restructuring of aid in the nation’s history, thousands of UN-administered programs have also lost funding, disrupting critical programs and services, breaking supply chains, and leading to widespread closures and layoffs.

These sweeping cuts affect food security, global health, democratic governance, and more—and the stakes have never been higher. As the landscape of international aid evolves, the world faces new questions about the impact of aid on communities, what makes international aid effective—and how to move forward.

This year's Lund debate from the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies brings together policy and practice experts for an unfiltered look at the future of international aid. Join Einaudi Center faculty Chris Barrett (Dyson/Brooks) and Muna Ndulo (Law) as they tackle these questions: Who benefits from aid? Do some types of aid work better than others? Should we pursue new approaches to international development? What are the best ways to take strategic action in the world while investing in America’s security, economy, and global position?

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Panelists

Chris Barrett is the Stephen B. and Janice G. Ashley Professor of Applied Economics and Management in the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management and a professor in the Cornell Brooks School of Public Policy. He is coeditor-in-chief of the journal Food Policy and a frequent commentator and policy advisor on food security and agricultural economics. Barrett won the USAID Science and Technology Pioneers Prize (2013), among many other awards for research, teaching, and public outreach. Read recent Chronicle coverage of Barrett's research.

Muna Ndulo is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of International and Comparative Law at Cornell Law School and an internationally recognized scholar in the fields of constitution making, governance and institution building, international criminal law, African legal systems, and human rights. Ndulo has served as consultant to the African Development Bank, World Bank, Economic Commission for Africa, United Nations Development Program, and other international organizations. He led the Einaudi Center's Institute for African Development from 2001 to 2020.

Moderator

Paul Kaiser is the Einaudi Center's practitioner in residence in fall 2025. Kaiser has extensive experience in international development, with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and the Pacific Islands. His career spans roles at USAID, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, and World Bank. Previously, Kaiser taught political science and African studies at Mississippi State University and the University of Pennsylvania.

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About the Debate

The Lund Critical Debate is a signature event of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. Established in 2008, Einaudi's Lund Debate series is made possible by the generosity of Judith Lund Biggs '57.

Towards A Cosmopolitics of Chemical Exposure

Chemicals can be hard to see. Same with gods, spirits and saints. Both kinds of entities are lively and ambiguous forces, more-than-human others. In this talk, I reflect on over a decade of ethnographic and collaborative research with exposure scientists and their working-class study participants in Mexico City, to argue for a cosmopolitics of chemical exposure. The exposure scientists and their research subjects in Mexico City, tend to have very different modes of relating to unseen forces. The scientists ignore spirits and saints while insisting on a nature separate from human concerns, allowing them to position humans as separable from chemicals. Their research subjects, on the other hand, grapple with the permeating powers of both chemicals and saints. For instance, they constantly assess whether their exposure to lead-glazed ceramics, which makes food sweeter, and to Santa Muerte, a saint reviled by the Catholic Church, disconnects them or binds them more closely with others. In effect, their grappling raises the question of whether these entities are worthy of devotion. My collaboration with the scientists now involves grappling together with more of the relations that constitute exposure, but I omit the saints and spirits from our considerations. I wonder though, if by extirpating those forces from our grapplings I have made it less urgent for the scientists to apprehend the unseen entities that might better hold us together.

Elizabeth F.S. Roberts is a professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan, who investigates scientific and public health knowledge production and its embodied effects in Latin America, where she focuses on a range of dynamic bodily processes, including chronic disease, chemical exposure, addiction and reproduction. Dr. Roberts currently collaborates with engineers environmental health scientists and economists to trace the looping social, economic, biological, and technical processes that shape everyday life, health, and inequality in working class neighborhoods in Mexico City. One of the key aims of Professor Roberts’ current work is the development of bioethnography, a method that combines social and life sciences approaches in order to make better knowledge about health and inequality. Dr. Roberts is the author of In Praise of Addiction: Or How We Can Learn to Love Dependency in a Damaged World (Princeton University Press, 2026) and God’s Laboratory: Assisted Reproduction in the Andes (U.C. California Press 2012).

Co-sponsored by Latin American and Caribbean Studies, STS, and Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability. Thank you.

Join this info session to learn about 2026 Global Hubs Faculty Research Seed Grants offered by Global Cornell as part of our Global Hubs initiative. Info session attendees will learn about the grant opportunity and application tips through a short presentation and Q&A.

Through these seed grants, Cornell faculty from across the university are invited to apply for research funds to work with collaborators at Hubs partner institutions. Funded projects should lead to tangible outcomes, including the submission of at least one co-authored peer-reviewed publication and at least one application for external grant funding.

Up to 20 applications for research with a Global Hubs collaborator will be funded.

Successful proposals will receive up to $5,000 from Cornell, with the potential for matching funds from some Global Hubs partner universities.

Application deadline: October 15, 2025, 4:00 p.m. ET

Project duration: January 1–December 31, 2026

Virtual information sessions:

September 18, 2025, 12:00–1:00 p.m. ET (register)

October 1, 2025, 12:00–1:00 p.m. ET (register)

Learn more and apply for a Global Hubs joint seed grant.

Join this info session to learn about 2026 Global Hubs Faculty Research Seed Grants offered by Global Cornell as part of our Global Hubs initiative. Info session attendees will learn about the grant opportunity and application tips through a short presentation and Q&A.

Through these seed grants, Cornell faculty from across the university are invited to apply for research funds to work with collaborators at Hubs partner institutions. Funded projects should lead to tangible outcomes, including the submission of at least one co-authored peer-reviewed publication and at least one application for external grant funding.

Up to 20 applications for research with a Global Hubs collaborator will be funded.

Successful proposals will receive up to $5,000 from Cornell, with the potential for matching funds from some Global Hubs partner universities.

Application deadline: October 15, 2025, 4:00 p.m. ET

Project duration: January 1–December 31, 2026

Virtual information sessions:

September 18, 2025, 12:00–1:00 p.m. ET (register)

October 1, 2025, 12:00–1:00 p.m. ET (register)

Learn more and apply for a Global Hubs joint seed grant.

Come to the LRC to practice your language skills and meet new people. Conversation Hours provide an opportunity to use the target language in an informal, low-pressure atmosphere. Have fun practicing a language you are learning! Gain confidence through experience! Just using your new language skills helps you learn more than you might think. Conversation Hours are open to any learner, including the public.