Rafael rounds up student publications

Having a recent graduate in the office during the summer makes me a very lucky blogger.  I mentioned to Rafael that it would be great to highlight published student writing and he was ON IT!  He sent a note to the Social List and the responses poured in.  I’ll let him tell you about it.

A few weeks ago, I sent an email to Fletcher’s current students and recent graduates.  My goal was to showcase some student publications from the past year to give you, the revered readers of this blog, an idea of what students do when they have researched an issue in depth for a seminar paper, capstone project, or internship, and don’t want their work to disappear in a drawer.  Their responses surprised me.  First, Fletcher students publish much more than I had expected.  Two, the range of types of publications is much wider than I had expected.  And three, in addition to clustering around some core themes of the Fletcher curriculum and current hot topics in the news, there are also issues that I did not know Fletcher students were working on, like fisheries in Norway, civil aviation in Timor-Leste, or entrepreneurship in Nunavik.  But more on that later.

One major theme that many Fletcher students research and publish on frequently is refugees and global migration.  In a truly international community, it is no wonder that an issue of such global importance is prominently represented.  A research fellow with the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime, PhD candidate Matthew Herbert, for instance, researched trends and routes of North African clandestine migrants.  For their capstone project, Mattea Cumoletti (MALD 17) and Anna Ackerman (MALD 17) produced a podcast to explore the potential of business interventions in solving the global refugee crisis (“Dollars, Displacement and Design: Entrepreneurship and the Refugee Crisis”).  Carter Banker (MALD 18), and Khaled Ismail, Claire Wilson (MALD 18), and Nathan Cohen-Fournier (MIB 17) worked more specifically on Syria; Carter considering Latin American as the next frontier for Syrian refugees, and Clair, Khaled, and Nathan conducting research with Syrian refugees in Tripoli, Lebanon.  Following the controversy around the Trump administration’s recent travel ban, Arthur Desloges (MALD 18) asked, “Does Mr. Trump know what a U.S. refugee is?”  PhD candidate Roxani Krystalli, who also works as a Program Manager at the Feinstein International Center’s Humanitarian Evidence Program, and Fletcher Professor Kim Wilson led a research team to conduct a study on the financial journey of refugees.  Some of their findings can be found here: “The Financial Journeys of Refugees: Charting a research agenda – Is corruption a relevant framework?

Additionally, Roxani published several articles on Colombia, specifically on how gender affects the peace process, through the Washington Post’s famous Monkey Cage blog: “The Colombian peace agreement has a big emphasis on the lives of women. Here’s how.”  With Professor Kimberly Theidon, Roxani also wrote “Here’s how attention to gender affected Colombia’s peace process.”  The two also collaborated on a piece on the reintegration of FARC rebels into Colombia’s society.  And for those who would rather listen than read, Roxani recorded a podcast on these issues with the Advanced Training Program on Humanitarian Action (ATHA).  Amelia Rasmussen (MALD 17), too, researched the Colombia peace process (Volume I, Issue 2, pp. 139-152) and published her findings in The Pardee Periodical Journal of Global Affairs, which is based just down the street at Boston University.  In the same edition, Protiti Roy (MALD 18) wrote about the implementation patterns of human rights treaties in India (pp. 111-126).

Moving further north on our scholarly globe, Andrew Tirrell (PhD candidate who just defended his dissertation) published on “Sociocultural institutions in Norwegian fisheries management” in Marine Policy.  Maxwell McGrath-Horn (MALD 17) compared Arctic and Amazon regional governance mechanisms in a co-authored article in Polar Geography and Putin and Peter the Great in The Diplomat, whose associate editor is, unsurprisingly, a Fletcher PhD candidate.  With support from Fletcher’s Institute for Business in the Global Context, Nathan Cohen-Fournier (MIB 17) conducted a study on entrepreneurship in Nunavik in light of climate change and globalization.  Also through the IBGC, Nadim Choucair (MALD 17) and Thomas Flynn (MALD 17) published their work on startups, incubators, accelerators, and venture capital firms in Lebanon: “CIRCULAR 331: $500+ Million to create Lebanon’s Knowledge-Based Economy?”  Staying in the Middle East, Sam Bollier (MALD 18) asked, “What’s Holding Up Labor Reforms in Qatar?” Julio Rivera Alejo (MALD 17) raised another good question, this time in Spanish: “¿Qué será del acuerdo internacional sobre cambio climático?”  Tatsuo Sakai (MALD 17 and a two-year blogger) looked at the civil-aviation sector and tourism industry in Timor-Leste.

Turning now toward the realm of security studies, among our military veteran students, the Navy seems to produce prolific writers.  In addition to our dean, who cannot seem to stop writing books and op-eds, Michael Keating (MALD 19) recently commented on the tragic incident involving the USS Fitzgerald.  Andrea Goldstein (MALD 18) has written for Task & Purpose since 2014, most recently on the “Marines United” scandal, “10 Must-Read Books on Women in the Military,” and mentorship.

Among us non-seafaring students of international security at Fletcher, Mariya Ilyas (MALD 18 and another Admissions Blog writer) looked at the current dynamics in NATO-Turkey relations and Colin Steele (MALD 18) reviewed two books — The Fleet at Flood Tide: America at Total War in the Pacific, 1944-1945 and Scales on War: The Future of America’s Military at Risk — for The Strategy Bridge and the Center for International Maritime Security respectively.  Lami Kim (PhD candidate) and yours truly (MALD 17) conducted research on nuclear proliferation and published our pieces on South Korean nuclear hedging and the recent discussions of a German Bomb through the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Voices of Tomorrow feature.

This already very long list does not nearly exhaust the pressing issues Fletcher students research from a wide array of perspectives.  Nonetheless, I hope it gives you a good idea of the diversity of interests and viewpoints that fuel student discussion, research, and writing here.

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