Summer Field Fellowship
Over the summer term, our master’s students work in a field-based, program-funded fellowship. Placements can be international or domestic. The experience offers students opportunities to engage in relevant practice and apply skills learned during their studies.
Students have worked at organizations in diverse locations including Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia, Kenya, Liberia, Turkey, and the United States. The field fellowship program provides students with a unique opportunity to learn, assist partners on the ground, engage in reflective practice, and improve their skills.
All students receive a stipend to assist in the conduct of this fieldwork. Students are prepared for the experience through assistance in finding and selecting the field placement and receiving targeted skills training.
Summer fellows take Intersections, an asynchronous, online course organized in partnership with the Center for Social Justice. The course directs reflection and skills-building that wraps around their practicum anywhere around the world. Intersections students ask ethical questions and apply social justice theories to real-world issues in virtual collaboration with a tight-knit learning cohort. Including this type of learning experience allows students to identify in real-time the application of conflict resolution skills and principles. Doing this in partnership with a cohort deepens learning by providing a global comparative experience.
Upon return to the program, summer fellows present their work to the program and participate in debriefing sessions that seek to synthesize learning.
The summer field fellowship is more than an internship. Students have been placed at leading local and international organizations conducting innovative peacebuilding and conflict resolution work. The summer internship program provides students with a meaningful, hands-on practical experience in the field while contributing to capacity building on the ground. The Conflict Resolution program seeks to apply principles of reciprocity, social justice, and partnership to our placements.
From 2012 through 2019, the program selected a small number of students for this summer intensive program. Beginning in 2020, the summer field fellowship is a funded, integral component of the program for all students.
2019 Fellows
Alexander Chaves, Department of Justice, Community Relations Service, Los Angeles Field Office
Dina Hanania, United Nations Population Fund, Amman, Jordan
Carolyn Ebersol, Partners in Development, Inc., Ixtacapa, Guatemala
Katherine Meyer, ACCORD, Durbin, South Africa
Ayaka Oishi, PeaceTech Lab, Washington DC
Kayla Owens, Department of Justice, Community Relations Service, Washington DC
2016 Field Blog
Click on each student’s name to read their field blog:
Country: Beirut, Lebanon
Organization: Danish Refugee Council
Position: Protection Monitoring Intern
As Protection Intern at the Danish Refugee Council in Beirut, Lebanon, Selin mainly coordinated the review and roll-out of new community- and household-level protection monitoring tools, enabling the organization to identify and track protection concerns experienced by Syrian refugees across the country. This included meeting with populations of concern and field teams to identify and respond to the challenges faced while conducting protection monitoring as well as coordinating with UN-led protection working groups to identify priority areas of investigation. Moreover, she organized and facilitated a workshop for field teams on the new protection monitoring methodology and wrote a quarterly protection monitoring report for a high-level donor. In addition to the review and rollout of the protection monitoring tools, Selin took the lead in ensuring that monthly reporting by protection field teams was timely and accurate.
Jessica Bissett & Chelsea Dunlap
Country: Gulu, Uganda
Organization: Refugee Law Project
Position: Conflict, Transitional Justice, and Governance Intern
Chelsea and Jessica worked as Conflict, Transitional Justice, and Governance interns for Refugee Law Project from May until August 2016. They worked on a variety of projects during their time in Gulu, Uganda. Chelsea and Jessica attended the Institute for African Transitional Justice and wrote the annual report on the week-long event. They also conducted interviews for and edited The Wounds Can Heal; a book of stories on survivors who had recovered from injuries caused by the war. In addition to this, they profiled and assisted victims with untreated war injuries to obtain medical treatment. Chelsea and Jessica spent much of their time conducting field interviews throughout the region to establish a relationship between depression and transitional justice and wrote a qualitative report based on this research for mental health advocacy and policies in northern Uganda. Their final project over the summer was working with the International Crimes Division and local NGOs to provide support to victims and witnesses during the Thomas Kwoyelo trial.
Yasmine Fawaz
Country: Switzerland
Organization: UNHCR
Fadia Hayee
Country: Turkey
Organization: UNDP
Country: Kenya
Organization: The Life and Peace Institute and The Institute for Justice and Reconciliation
Country: Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
Organization: CO-OPERATION IRELAND, Youth and Education Programs
Position: Project Management Intern
The main program Mark was assigned to at Co-operation Ireland was “Amazing the Space,” a youth and education initiative, that coincided with the UN International Day of Peace in September. “Amazing the Space” was a youth–led peacebuilding initiative that brought thousands of young people together from across Northern Ireland to celebrate their contributions to peace and to show them that play an important role in building and sustaining a peaceful society moving forward. He reported directly to the CEO and the Director of Fundraising as well as colleagues from partnering organizations. Mark’s main tasks included various aspects of program planning, such as procurement, graphic design coordination, research, and data collection. Additionally, he was responsible for communication and logistic support around the “Amazing the Space” launch event that took place at the end of June.
Country: Beirut, Lebanon
Organization: Mercy Corps & Protection Intern, Danish Refugee Council
Position: Program Development and Quality Intern
As a fellow in the Program Development and Quality Unit of Mercy Corps Lebanon, Mirjam prepared the organization’s annual country strategy, conducted background research on child labor and early marriage, and wrote the child protection and water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) strategies with national staff and regional coordinators. She further proofread and line-edited weekly donor reports, conducted interviews in the field offices to assess needs and improve coordination mechanisms with the headquarter, and established a knowledge management database to enhance integrated programming. During the second half of her stay, she worked as a Protection Intern at the Danish Refugee Council, where she developed a pilot conflict transformation program for adolescent boys and girls of refugee and host communities, wrote communication material, and participated in interagency coordination meetings.
Alissa Lalime
Country: Cairo, Egypt, with temporary duties in Amman, Jordan, and Tunis, Tunisia
Organization: International Organization for Migration (IOM) Regional Office for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)
Position: Department of Operations and Emergencies (DOE) Intern
Alissa created Migration Crisis Operational Framework (MCOF) documents in collaboration with Country Offices in the MENA region. In doing so, she aggregated existing resources and materials available to Country Offices, and developed new materials, as required. Alissa interviewed Country, Regional, and Headquarters colleagues on their interaction with the MCOF. She additionally submitted a final report on my findings, including strategies and recommendations for enhanced MCOF implementation. Her work culminated in MCOF strategy documents with IOM Libya, IOM Sudan, and IOM Yemen.
Country: Liberia
Organization: The Kaizen Company
Position: Program Officer
For Nick’s summer internship, he interned in Liberia as a Program Officer for a U.S. Department of State-funded project called Mitigating Local Disputes in Liberia (MLDL); implemented by The Kaizen Company. There, he supports the project by designing and implementing mediation training and an organizational self-assessment to strengthen over 30 community and governmental security councils (structures) in their ability to identify and peacefully resolve security concerns. Nick also worked closely with the home office in Washington to research monitoring and evaluation indicators, help manage and analyze a large database of security concerns, and use the data uncovered by the assessments to write a progress report on each structure. Though his internship was based in Ganta, his tasks gave him the opportunity to travel throughout the country to visit the various structures and conduct mediation training. This experience was invaluable as it afforded Nick the opportunity to learn about the challenges of doing peacebuilding work in the field as well as how it relates to West African culture.