Fares Summer Fellowship Information Session & Research Report – February 14, 2023

By Kate Hibbert

The Fares Center held an Information Session on Summer Opportunities on Tuesday, February 14th. The event consisted of a student panel where current and former Fletcher students talked about the Fares Summer Fellowship as well as other scholarships and opportunities available for Fletcher students to do internships, research, language-study or work in/on the Middle East and North Africa. The event concluded with a Q&A where students asked questions about these opportunities, application process, timelines, alternative funding, and more.

Guest speakers included: Rachel Carrillo, MALD ‘20, who is soon to be stationed in Riyadh for the US Department of State; Vasilis Petropoulos, MALD ‘23, who completed an internship with the Bergoff Foundation’s Yemen Unit last summer; Seth Owusu-Mante, PhD Candidate, whose research last summer focused on climate finance in the Middle East, with an emphasis on Egypt; and Alexander Kochenburger, MALD ‘23, who completed an internship with New Lines studying the truth and reconciliation commission in Morocco.

The Fares Summer Fellowship supports Fletcher students who will be doing summer internships in the Middle East or related to the Middle East. These internships can be either research or practice focused, but the central theme of the work or the organization should be the Middle East as a region or a specific country within the region.