The Fletcher Initiative on Religion, Law, and Diplomacy is supported by a team of graduate students and undergraduate interns who organize the annual fall conference and Spring Speaker Series.
Current Student Leadership
Constantinos (Costa) Angelakis
Costa is a second-year MALD student concentrating in international legal studies and regional studies, focusing on the Eastern Mediterranean. Prior to Fletcher, he worked as a corporate paralegal at Ropes & Gray LLP in Boston. He has interned at the Consulate General of Greece in Boston and at the MA House of Representatives, and he is a staff editor on the Fletcher Forum of World Affairs. Costa graduated from Tufts University in 2019 with a degree in International Relations and Classics.
Hannah Campeanu
Hannah is a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy 2024 candidate, focusing on human security and global governance. She is also the Senior Staff Writer and Editor for the Fletcher Russia and Eurasia Program. She holds a bachelor’s degree in English with a minor in business from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. Prior to her studies at Fletcher, she worked in editorial roles in academic book publishing for six years, including at Oxford University Press on history and religion and at Springer Nature on medicine. In addition to religion, she is interested in the subjects of migration and food security.
Kate Hibbert
Kate is a MALD student focusing on negotiation and conflict resolution. Prior to Fletcher, she managed data and fundraising projects at a nonprofit middle school dedicated to serving newcomer refugee girls in Decatur, Georgia, U.S. She holds a bachelor’s degree in World Languages with a minor in TESOL from Grace College in Winona Lake, Indiana. For that program, she studied in France, Argentina, and Jordan to learn French, Spanish, and Arabic. Her hometown is Ypsilanti, Michigan. Kate hopes to strengthen diversity, equity, inclusion, & accessibility (DEIA), peacebuilding, and conflict resolution efforts in her career in international relations and public service.
Miriam Silverman Israel
Miriam is a second-year dual-degree student pursuing a Masters of Arts in Law and Diplomacy (MALD) as well as a Masters of Theological Studies (MTS) at the Harvard Divinity School. Her studies focus on the human impacts of climate change policy, including adaptation and resilience, equity and inclusion and the role of faith-based advocacy in promoting greater climate ambition. She is Co-President of the Fletcher Energy and Environment Club and part of the Fletcher Initiative for Religion, Law and Diplomacy leadership team.
Ciara Moezidis
Ciara is a first-year MALD student also pursuing a dual degree at Harvard Divinity School. This is her second year supporting RLD. She focuses on human rights issues of ethnoreligious persecution, apartheid, and genocide in the Middle East and North Africa. She is also passionate about bringing a more human-rights-centered and religiously-literate approach to U.S. foreign policy. Born and raised in California, Ciara attended Santa Clara University, where she served as student body president and held internships on Capitol Hill, at the Project on Middle East Democracy, and for the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief.
Izzy Nickel
Izzy joined RLD in 2022 and is completing her Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy (’24) from the Fletcher School with focuses in International Negotiation & Conflict Resolution and International Information & Communication. Prior to her enrollment, Izzy was the Assistant Director, External Affairs at Our Generation Speaks (OGS), a Boston-based incubator and ‘people accelerator’ that joins Palestinian and Israeli entrepreneurs to create startups from scratch. Previously, she held a position with Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco office, as well as worked with international solicitors and humanitarians while working and studying in The Hague, The Netherlands. She holds a Bachelor’s in International Global Studies and Sociology from Brandeis University with a special focus in conflict resolution.
Katyayinee Richhariya
Katyayinee is a second-year MALD student at The Fletcher School. She did her Bachelor’s in Political Science from the University of Delhi. and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding. She has been a part of the Ministry of External Affairs and the Parliament of India as an intern and researched for think tanks in India. She was a part of the Secretary General’s office at Religions for Peace International as an intern in the Summer of 2022. She takes a keen interest in promoting people-centric peace through diplomacy and wishes to specialize in Human Security, with a focus on political violence and International Communications.
Robin Zachariah Tharakan
Robin is a final-year graduate student at the Fletcher School, focusing on technology policy and public leadership.
Undergraduate Intern: Alexandra (Alex) Dingle
Alex is an undergraduate intern for RLD. She is a junior at Tufts majoring in International Relations and Middle Eastern Studies and minoring in Child Study and Human Development. Before starting college, she took a gap year and spent seven months volunteering with Teach for India in a 4th grade classroom, spurring her interest in working with children from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The following summer, she worked at a refugee camp in Greece and directed a program for children, solidifying her passion for refugee and migrant rights. On campus, she is on the leadership team for the Middle East Research Group (MERG) and Tufts Democrats while also pursuing research on recreational programs in refugee camps through the Laidlaw Scholars program. She grew up in New York City and is a dual citizen of Greece.
Undergraduate Intern: Virginia Donoghue
Virginia is an undergraduate intern for RLD. She is a junior at Tufts majoring in International Relations with a concentration in the Middle East and a minor in Arabic. Last summer, she worked as an intern for the Congressional and Government Affairs program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. She is currently studying abroad in Amman, Jordan at the University of Jordan.