The Einaudi Global Research Fellows Program supports PhD students, postdocs, visiting scholars, and local academics who are deeply engaged in research that bridges international or regional studies with critical examinations of global challenges.

Eligible students:
• Have completed at least two years of graduate education
• Engaged in research on a topic of global or regional studies significance
• Hold a strong desire to impact global challenges and create real-world solutions
• Interested in engaging and collaborating with other researchers

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

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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.

Climate change deteriorates habitability. How will people respond who inhabit the affected spaces? (Im-)Mobility is one of the most prominently debated behavioral responses. Importantly, there is little scientific support for the claim that environmental deterioration by itself results in international mass migration. There is, however, good evidence that migrants are vulnerable to climate change impacts during their journeys. This paper explores the extent to which the notion of future, inevitable large-scale, climate-driven, South-North migration prevails in official positions – despite these nuanced findings. To this end, the paper takes stock of how national governments frame these futures in their national security strategies. The paper discusses framing differences between countries that typically receive migrants and those that are typically countries of origin. Governments, particularly from the Global North, frame migration often as an inevitable function of climate change. They do refer to migrants not as victims of this breakdown of sustainability or as protagonists of adaptation – but as the drivers of breakdown of peace in destination countries. In closing, the paper points to framings that are more aligned with the state of scientific research and that are more conducive to a sustainable, peaceful response to potential climate-related displacements. More generally, the observed framing of climate-related mobility is a textbook case for counterproductive framings of climate-related insecurities. If not well aligned with research, such framings risk justifying unsustainable policies that prioritize reactive means and the securitization of national space over ambitious climate policies that aim for long-term human security and sustainability.

About the speaker

Dr. Anselm Vogler is a Non-Resident Fellow at IFSH since February 2024. Until recently, he was Postdoctoral Researcher at Harvard University, Cambridge, USA and, prior to that, at the Department of Geography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 2024 he successfully defended his dissertation on climate security policies. From April 2020 until January 2024, he was research associate at IFSH and worked in the DFG cluster of excellency Climate, Climatic Change, and Society (CLICCS) at University Hamburg. Anselm Vogler studied political science in Dresden and New York. He was awarded an International Recognition for his dissertation by the Hans Günter Brauch foundation as well as the Viktor Klemperer Medal for distinguished success during studies and an award at the Beijing-Humboldt Forum.

Host

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

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