UNDERGRADUATE AWARDS
RUTHMARY SIKDER
Glacial Exodus: Unraveling Climate Migration in Rural Bangladesh
In my research project, I examined how melting Himalayan glaciers affect rural communities in Bangladesh, focusing on migration to urban areas, particularly Dhaka’s slums. I employed qualitative methods, including content analysis of environmental reports and newspaper articles. My findings reveal that rural Bangladesh faces severe environmental degradation due to climate change and glacier melt, leading to rural-urban migration. This degradation manifests as intensified river flows, erosion, and water contamination, forcing rural residents to seek safety and economic opportunities in cities. I also analyzed demographic shifts indicating declining rural population growth and rising urbanization. These findings underscore significant social changes resulting from climate change. I utilized data from the World Bank’s WDI and Macrotrends to illustrate these demographic trends. I identified challenges faced by climate migrants, such as precarious living conditions and gender-specific risks in overcrowded slums. My research concludes that climate change and glacier melting severely impact vulnerable communities, necessitating immediate policy interventions to address their socio-environmental vulnerabilities. It emphasizes the need for comprehensive strategies to mitigate the adverse effects of these environmental changes.
SUMAYA ZAHID
Higher Education Policy as a Tool for Post-Conflict Reconciliation and Recovery: A Case Study of Post-Genocide Rwanda
As conflict-affected countries emerge from civil wars, post-conflict states’ national agendas often prioritize reconstruction, economic recovery, and national peacebuilding. This study evaluates what policies, strategies, and approaches a post-conflict state can take to build a more peaceful society through its post-war higher education policy. This paper is a qualitative case study that employs a mixed methods approach utilizing discourse and policy analysis methods to examine post-conflict Rwandan higher education policy in relation to peacebuilding and post-conflict recovery. The analysis shows that the Rwandan state employed a range of policies, strategies, and mechanisms to promote unity and reconciliation through its tertiary education sector. The analysis found that the main strategies the post-conflict Rwandan state utilized focused on employing strategic rhetoric, encouraging equitable access, ordering curriculum reform, and mandating community engagement. However, the state fell short of sufficiently addressing the issues of the history curriculum and participatory teaching methods encouraging critical thinking and open dialogue. I argue that this reflects a reluctancy on the part of the nation’s leadership to approach sensitive or potentially confrontational matters. I argue that while the Rwandan state took a very proactive approach in several important areas of policy action, it took a more reserved approach to matters that could be seen as controversial. The Rwandan case demonstrates that the higher education sector can play a complex role that simultaneously promotes and threatens peacebuilding and reconciliation. From the Rwandan efforts to reconstruct its post-war higher education sector in a way that positions it to positively contribute to peacebuilding and recovery, lessons can be drawn for countries facing a similar post-war context with divided societies.
Undergraduate Honorable Mentions
SAMIA MERS
Morocco’s Double Standard of Solidarity: Shifting National Consciousness on the Western Sahara and Palestine
The Western Sahara is the only land besides the Palestinian territories that is recognized by the United Nations as being illegitimately occupied by a foreign state against the will of the subjected population, yet only Palestine is acknowledged as such by the Moroccan masses. Drawing on narrative, content, and historical methods of analysis to examine investigative media coverage of normalization efforts by the Moroccan state, online discourse amongst Moroccans, and propaganda speeches given by the Moroccan king, I examine the implications of the Moroccan masses’ overwhelming support of the occupation of the Western Sahara while paradoxically calling for Palestinian self-determination. These methodologies have displayed that Moroccan state efforts to normalize relations with israel while utilizing its ties to carry out the occupation of the Western Sahara have heightened the visibility of these contradictions despite the proliferation of propaganda, especially as the Moroccan state maintains a front of support for the Palestinian people – leading to a critical shift in Moroccan public opinion with the potential to delegitimize Morocco’s occupation of the Western Sahara.
AIJA KELLER
The Wagner Group and Democratization in the Sahel
In recent years, the Sahel region has been at the center of instability and violence in Africa, marked by the rise of jihadi groups, coups-d'etats, and the massacre and displacement of countless civilians (Kumar 2023, 5-7). As Western powers like the United States and France have been forced to withdraw their troops from the region, new actors such as the Wagner Group, a Russian private military company (PMC), have emerged to fill the security vacuum (Perandrés de Vicente 2024, 12). While partnerships with the Wagner Group offer short-term security to Sahelian regimes, its involvement has been detrimental to the democratization process in the region, and has left “Sahelian populations in the long-term more vulnerable to increased instability” (Nietvelt 2023, 58). The impact of the Wagner Group on the Sahel is crucial to understand as this region is rich in natural resources such as gold, oil and gas, and the stability of this region has global implications, with international actors like the EU, the United States, and Russia involved. Through analyzing case studies and secondary sources on the group’s operations in countries like Mali, Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic (CAR), and Niger, this paper aims to examine how the Wagner Group’s activities in the Sahel region have hindered democratization efforts by supporting authoritarian regimes, engaging in resource exploitation, undermining Western narratives, and intensifying existing vulnerabilities and instability (Faulkner 2022).
May 29, 2025