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Learn with Global Studies Initiative

Courses — Each semester, a number of Engaged Scholarship courses help students to understand and address contemporary global challenges. Regularly-offered ESCH courses include: ECON 015 Economic Poverty and Inequality, PEAC 071B Research Seminar: Global Nonviolent Action Database, and POLS 062 The Politics and Practice of Humanitarianism. Additionally, Swarthmore College's Global Studies Program offers a minor and a special major. The curriculum focuses on: global processes, systems, and phenomena, the relationship between the local and the global, and trans-border connections between people and events.

In June 2022, the following Swarthmore faculty members received a $300 research grant to to enhance their global content or integrate global content:

  • Nicté Fuller Medina - Linguistics
  • Ryan Ku - English Literature
  • Sunka Simon - Film and Media Studies
  • Tracey Stewart - Music

Global Affairs — From 2014-2019, the Global Affairs program took an interdisciplinary approach to examining our most pressing global challenges. It projected disciplines such as Economics, Environmental Studies, History, Peace and Conflict Studies, and Political Science onto the global stage, asking how these disciplines can work together to help us understand our complex, global world. Swarthmore’s increasingly international composition and outlook coincided with rising uncertainty about the future of global order, making Global Affairs a timely Engaged Scholarship initiative. This initiative was directed by Professor of Political Science Dominic Tierney and Associate Professor of Political Science Emily Paddon Rhoads.

Swarthmore at COP27 — A group of Swarthmore students, staff, and faculty attended the United Nations Foundation Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Egypt in November 2022, witnessing and contributing to  international unity against the existential threat of climate change. Learn more about their experience.

Swarthmore International Relations Journal (SIRJ) — From 2016-2019, SIRJ was an undergraduate journal publishing works on global affairs. Established in 2016, SIRJ was student written, edited, and produced. The primary goals of SIRJ were twofold: to help foster a new generation of scholars, and to bring fresh, liberal arts perspectives to international relations. Through a peer-reviewed editing process, SIRJ sought to become a major vehicle for undergraduate research on international relations, and encourage critical and intellectual dialogues among scholars.