Learn more about the Laidlaw Leadership and Research Program for undergraduates, tips for connecting with faculty research mentors, and advice for writing a successful application.

Laidlaw 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 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 more than a dozen universities.

Register for the information session here.

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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.

Learn more about the migration studies minor and international relations minor—offered by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. Both minors are open to all Cornell undergraduates and include courses from across the university.

With a focus on global migration experiences, the migration studies minor prepares students to understand the historical and contemporary contexts and factors that drive international migration.

The international relations minor offers students the chance to study the politics, economics, history, languages, and cultures of the world.

Register here.

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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.

Artistic freedom is a fundamental democratic right.

Creative expression, from poetry to street art, theater, and literature, is often at the vanguard of political resistance and change, and so artists are some of the first to be silenced. In this panel, speakers discuss their own experiences as artists in authoritarian contexts where their ability to produce art was violently suppressed.

These artists have all found haven at Cornell. Their art speaks to the trauma of authoritarianism and the hope for change.

Speakers:

Sharifa “Elja” Sharifi, Afghan visiting scholar and 2022–23 Artist Protection Fund Fellow at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art

Pedro X. Molina, Nicaraguan political cartoonist and visiting critic with the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies

Khadija Monis '24, Afghan student, poet and artist

Rachel Beatty Riedl (moderator), director of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies and John S. Knight Professor of International Studies

The event is sponsored by the Johnson Museum and Global Cornell as part of the university’s theme this year on The Indispensable Condition: Freedom of Expression at Cornell. The event will be held in person and livestreamed.

"Reverse Design and its Role in Curricular and Programmatic Articulation"
Catherine Baumann
Senior Instructional Professor and Director, University of Chicago Language Center

Reverse design, also called backward design, is a framework for curricular planning that begins "at the end." Targeted outcomes and their assessment form the basis for making the many decisions that belong to the process of curricular design and development. In this workshop, a reverse design model will be introduced, and its components defined and described. Multiple concrete examples of how reverse design was applied to solve curricular challenges at the course, course sequence, and programmatic level will be shared.

Bio: Catherine C. Baumann is a Senior Instructional Professor and Director of the University of Chicago Language Center (CLC). She received her Ph.D. in Second Languages and Cultures Education at the University of Minnesota, specializing in reading comprehension and language testing. She directed the German language program at the University of Chicago from 1999-2019, and now oversees all programs in the CLC. She consults for language programs in higher education on a variety of curricular and assessment-related issues.

This event will be held in person in G25 Stimson and will also be streamed live over Zoom (registration required). Join us at the LRC or on Zoom.

The event is free and open to the public. Campus visitors and members of the public must adhere to Cornell's public health requirements for events.

Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program (LACS) Seminar Series, Co-sponsored by: The Communication Department.

The field of environmental communication has undergone substantial development in recent decades. Scholars from rich nations have predominantly spurred this growth, with a pronounced emphasis on climate change. The input from scholars situated in other global regions, such as those hailing from Latin American countries, continues to linger on the periphery of worldwide dialogues. This marginalization limits the potential of insights derived from research pertaining to and originating from southern regions that can enhance international discussions about environmental communication.

This talk examines the structural impediments alongside epistemological and ontological presumptions that obscure Latin American participation in the environmental communication field, drawing upon ideas, initiatives, and experiences in this region. It delves into factors such as historical background, worldview, the dynamics of colonialism and resistance, institutional frameworks, and cultural influences to emphasize the necessity of comprehending these intricate elements for advancing environmental communication research.

Bruno Takahashi Dr. Bruno Takahashi is the Brandt Professor of Environmental Communication in the School of Journalism and AgBioResearch at Michigan State University. He is also research director of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism. He studies the communication of environmental and science issues in Latin America and among marginalized US populations. Bruno is from Perú and received his BA in communication from the Universidad de Lima and MS and Ph.D. in environmental science from SUNY ESF.

COMMColloquium

Co-sponsored with the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program

Context Matters: Insights From Environmental Communication Research in Latin America

Bruno Takahashi, Professor, Michigan State University

1pm in 102 Mann

Reception to follow in the Hub

The field of environmental communication has undergone substantial development in recent decades. Scholars from rich nations have predominantly spurred this growth, with a pronounced emphasis on climate change. The input from scholars situated in other global regions, such as those hailing from Latin American countries, continues to linger on the periphery of worldwide dialogues. This marginalization limits the potential of insights derived from research pertaining to and originating from southern regions that can enhance international discussions about environmental communication.

This talk examines the structural impediments alongside epistemological and ontological presumptions that obscure Latin American participation in the environmental communication field, drawing upon ideas, initiatives, and experiences in this region. It delves into factors such as historical background, worldview, the dynamics of colonialism and resistance, institutional frameworks, and cultural influences to emphasize the necessity of comprehending these intricate elements for advancing environmental communication research.

Dr. Bruno Takahashi is the Brandt Professor of Environmental Communication in the School of Journalism and AgBioResearch at Michigan State University. He is also research director of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism. He studies the communication of environmental and science issues in Latin America and among marginalized US populations. Bruno is from Perú and received his BA in communication from the Universidad de Lima and MS and Ph.D. in environmental science from SUNY ESF.

Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program (LACS) Seminar Series

Suriname is a country in the northern part of South America. Having a tropical humid climate, about 93% of the country is covered by rainforest. This is also the area where many of the indigenous and tribal communities (descendants from run away African slaves) live.

One of these tribal communities, the Saamaka, is situated in the Upper Suriname River Area and consists of over 70 villages that mainly lie along the Suriname river (one of Suriname’s most important rivers). This community has been practicing agriculture in the form of shifting cultivation for almost 300 years. This form of cultivation can be described as a piece of land (forest) that is first cleared and afterwards various crops such as cassava, banana, peanuts, rice and sweet potato are planted over a period of 2-3 years and afterwards the farmer clears a new plot to repeat the same steps due to a decline in soil fertility and reduced crop yield.

Just like the urban areas in Suriname, the Saamaka have noticed a change in the climate in the form of prolonged periods of draught and heavy rainfall which often results in flooding of the villages and farm land.

In an effort to adapt and mitigate these phenomena, this community with the help of Tropenbos Suriname (local NGO) has started to adapt climate smart agricultural practices in the form of agroforestry.

Humans and the Environment in the Coastal & Canal Zone of Panama:

Scientists are worried about the way several external factors are contributing to the deterioration along Panama’s central Caribbean rainforest and coastal-marine ecosystems and preventing recovery in areas affected by contamination because they are practically doomed by anthropogenic development. If unplanned development continues on the rise, the ecosystem could continue to survive in previously healthy areas, but without any sustainable and substantial recovery.

The University of Panama is trying to implement a permanent system of scientific interdisciplinary researches in order to conserve the natural resources in Colón province (mangrove forest, sandy beaches, sea grasses, coral reefs, rainforest). These researches have a great priority for the Country of Panama for three reasons: first, due to the proximity of the area to the Panama Canal watershed; second, because Colón is located on the Caribbean side of Panama, with the second largest commercial city of the country (urban and industrial area) and communities claimed for sustainable development alternatives; third, to provide a research site for Panamanian and international scientists to implement environmental education, international center for studies around the unique ecosystem that is protecting Colon City and surrounding communities of the frequent floods in wet season and also serve both as a natural break water and wildlife refuge.

Javier Hurtado Yow is an Environmental Biologist & Educator with expertise in environmental sciences related to human rights. He has a Master’s in Environmental Management of Tropical Ecosystems obtained at Paris Tech Institute, France. He’s Professor of the Practice at the University of Panama and Regional Manager at the Panama's Human Rights office (Defensoría del Pueblo). His goals revolve around enhancing capacities in natural resource and environmental management in the interoceanic zone of the Panama Canal. His aim is to create and develop initiatives and policies that improve the sustainability of socioeconomic and environmental conditions in provinces outside the capital of the country, including Colon, western Panama, and other regions.

Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program (LACS) Seminar Series.

Although the emergence of the far right is anything but a new phenomenon and has reached a global dimension, until recent times the Latin American region has not experienced a massive presence of far right parties or leaders. Things started to change in the last few years, in particular with the presidential elections of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil in 2018 and Nayib Bukele in El Salvador in 2019. In addition, it seems that the far right has been gaining ground in other countries, such as Argentina (“Libertad Avanza”), Chile (“Partido Republicano”), Peru (“Renovación Popular”) and Uruguay (“Cabildo Abierto”). Despite this rapid appearance of the far right across the region, up to now there is almost no comparative research about this phenomenon. This means that we have very limited knowledge about the similarities and differences between the existing far right forces in Latin America. To address this research gap, in this presentation I we present the preliminary findings of a research project that looks at the ideas advanced by different far right forces across Latin America and examine its proximity with the frames employed by the far right in Europe and beyond.

Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser is professor at the Institute of Political Science at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and an associate researcher at the Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES) and Director of the Laboratory for the Study of the Far Right (ultra-lab). His main area of research is comparative politics and he has a special interest in the ambivalent relationship between populism and democracy. Together with Cas Mudde (University of Georgia), he has published "Populism: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford University Press, 2017), which has been translated into more than fifteen languages.

-- EVENT CANCELLED --

CANCELLED--A legacy of the transatlantic slave trade, Brazil is home to the largest number of African descendants outside Africa and the greatest number of domestic workers in the world. Drawing on ten years of interviews and ethnographic research, Dr. Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman examines the lives of marginalized informal domestic workers who are called “adopted daughters” but who live in slave-like conditions in the homes of their adoptive families. She traces a nuanced and, at times, disturbing account of how adopted daughters, who are trapped in a system of racial, gender, and class oppression, live with the coexistence of extreme forms of exploitation and seemingly loving familial interactions and affective relationships. Highlighting the humanity of her respondents, Hordge-Freeman examines how filhas de criação (raised daughters) navigate the realities of their structural constraints in the context of pervasive norms of morality, gratitude, and kinship. In all, Professor Hordge-Freeman clarifies the link between contemporary and colonial forms of exploitation, while highlighting the resistance and agency of informal domestic workers.