Having served as director of the Human Rights Program since 2001, Barbara Frey is heavily involved in engaging students and researchers with real-world human rights issues happening in the United States and countries around the world.

During her time in CLA, international relations alumna Mary Hamel was fascinated by her experiences in intercultural communications. She says, "For me these experiences were life changing, and many years later continue to inform how I view the world."

For the Laces, global studies runs in the family! The siblings attribute their fascination with global studies to their parents, who have always encouraged travel and learning through discovery.

The Institute for Global Studies in collaboration with several programs and centers at the University of Minnesota invites scholars to submit abstracts for an April 2017 conference on Remapping European Media Cultures during the Cold War Networks, Encounters, Exchanges.

Global studies and sociology professor Michael Goldman looks at urbanization practices that leave residents with the task of managing life in a city captured by global desires. “Global cities are alive with two very different social imaginaries: Those who desire to rebuild the city with ‘world-class’ infrastructure versus the urban majority’s concerns of being dispossessed by these elite projects,” he says.

Tom Wolfe, associate professor of history and global studies, taught a European studies course last spring with a unique approach: The course was run like a think tank and examined four pressing issues in contemporary European life. Students investigated recent events and analyzed public policy in Europe.

From June to November of 2015, the Institute for Global Studies, in partnership with the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies, worked with K-16 teachers to explore the issues and challenges of genocide education in the classroom. Almost 75 educators participated in a series of collaborative workshops that addressed the historical and sociological significance of the genocide in a global context (Holocaust, Native American, Armenian, Cambodian, and Rwandan Genocides).

If you’re going to be heading to the Great Minnesota Get-together, stop by the University of Minnesota building to say 'hello' to some of our departments, who will be at the State Fair this year.

Starting a company was not something Svetha Janumpalli (BA 2008 - global studies and economics) had expected to do, even after she graduated from the U. But now her company is using a microfinance model to make a difference.