Every year, the Graduate Institute offers Summer Programmes, which are open to undergraduate students, graduate students and young professionals. This year, the Summer Programmes included a four-week session (which could be taken as a whole or divided into one or multiple-week segments) on International Affairs from 17 June to 12 July 2019, covering topics taught by professors specialised in humanitarian, security, global health and environmental affairs.
Week one of the Summer Programme in International Affairs acquainted students with a contextualised and critical understanding of humanitarianism, humanitarian interventions, the Responsibility to Protect, and humanitarian actors and their actions in a course on “Humanitarianism: Its History and Politics”, directed by Professor Davide Rodogno.
During the second week, students were given an opportunity to engage in such mapping and critical thinking to uncover the fullness of security in the early 21st century. Terrorism, migration, conflict and armed groups, but also societal dispossession, economic deprivation and securitisation itself as an impediment to security.
“Arguably more than ever, security currently stands at the centre of international affairs. What ‘security’ is, however, is in need of further exploration and unpacking, said Professor Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou, who directed the course on “Security and Insecurity Today”.
“The week on International Security at the Graduate Institute was a rewarding one”, said Abha Calindi, who is pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in History and Politics at the University of Warwick. “I can honestly say that I was inspired on a daily basis, especially by Professor Mohamedou. […] We were constantly pushed to think critically and challenge our preconceived assumptions about what security and securitisation means, at whose expense it comes and how the theoretical meets the practical in the policy-making world.
The third week of the Summer Programme was directed by Visiting Lecturer, Suerie Moon, and exposed students to a wide range of global health challenges, from outbreaks to universal health coverage and from antimicrobial resistance to access to medicines. It also provided students with an analytical toolkit to dissect any global health challenge based on the understanding that improving human health is fundamental to achieving more equitable peace and development.
The fourth and final week of the course, directed by Professor Jorge E. Viñuales, gave a 360-degree view of global environmental governance.
The Summer Programme on the United Nations and Global Challenges, the second instalment of summer programmes, will run from 19 to 30 August 2019.
Find out more information on the Graduate Institute’s Summer Programmes.