WPF Annual Student Seminar Competition

Prof. Bridget Conley-Zilkic at The World Peace Foundation asked me to share their call for proposals for their upcoming competition.  I’m happy to do so!

The World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School invites Fletcher students to submit proposals for a two-day seminar to be held on campus in February 2015.  WPF seminars offer a rare opportunity for leading experts to engage in incisive, collegial and sustained dialogue on the pressing problems of our day.  The student competition enables Fletcher School students to frame an issue and interact with leading global experts on the topic of their choosing.

The topic should be related to conflict, security, peace or human rights.  The criteria for selecting the winning proposal will be that it is innovative, well-articulated, and relevant to the Foundation’s vision that intellectual leadership is important to promoting peace.  Noting that the vision of these seminars is to explore issues that might otherwise not gain attention, the WPF does not make a requirement that the issue should be directly connected to policy outcomes.

All costs will be borne by the WPF, including travel and accommodation for invited participants, catering, costs for interns for organizing and taking notes, and other associated expenses.  The competition winners will work with the WPF to organize the seminar, and will be paid a standard hourly rate for their time.

Important dates:

October 10, 2014: deadline for proposals to be submitted to worldpeacefoundation@tufts.edu.

October 17, 2014: winners announced via email.

February 2015: Seminar held at The Fletcher School

Events that we hosted based on past winning proposals include:

Unlearning Violence: Evidence and Policies for Early Childhood Development and Peace,  February 13-14, 2014.  Last year we departed from our model and accepted two closely related proposals as winners and hosted an open conference.

Advocacy in Conflict: Methods, Impacts and Ethics, February 28 – March 1, 2013.

Drug Trafficking and Transnational Organized Crime: Re-Framing the Debate, May 7 & 8, 2012.

More information including detailed proposal guidelines are available on our website.