The third masterclass was on Human Security: The Concept of Human Security and its Application to Building Peace by Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh. Through this session, we had to focus on important concepts in international relations and discuss their relevance to the study of contemporary security studies phenomena and peace-building.  

 

The key terms we were focusing on were human security vs national security, liberal peace-building, radicalization, violent extremism, terrorism from the perspective of people, institutions and the state. Through the reading material from this session, we looked at the security of individuals and institutions, more specifically, its definition and parameters, added value to security, development and human rights. We also explored questions such as security of whom, security from what, security by what means and whether the concept of security can legitimize peace-building and state-building. 

 

For this session, I was asked to make a presentation on the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) with my partner Gràcia. I spoke about how the concept of the R2P produced the idea that “State sovereignty as a responsibility” and how it confirmed the belief that sovereignty isn’t just protection from outside interference, but instead, it is a matter of states which have responsibility for their population’s welfare.

 

This session for me was as relevant as the session on Sustainable Development as I (in the future) can incorporate my learning from this session into what I have learned so far in Global Politics in correlation with the GPC (Global Politics Challenge) Security from all of the previous units done in class. Something that I liked about this session is how within human security it also talks about economic, health and social welfare as well as the crossing of boundaries and the position of the government in the context of human security. Likewise, as in sustainable development, I really feel that given the situation of the world now, human security is one of our top priorities and I would also like to pursue this field of study in the future. 

The second masterclass was Sustainable Development: Challenges and Opportunities on a finite Planet by Tancrède Voituriez. The aim of the session was to be confronted with the political implications of climate change and sustainable development. Throughout this session, we were asked to work on international events and had to debate on the orientation of climate change policies. 

 

Personally, I thought this was one of the best masterclasses in the entire summer school course. In school, I am currently taking Environmental Systems and Societies (ESS) so this session really fuelled my interest in the subject. The concepts that we focused on were sustainable development, planetary boundaries, Anthropocene and tipping points. This session was incredibly relevant to today’s world as we are actually in the geological epoch where there is significant human impact on Earth’s geology and ecosystems.  

 

Although this session introduced fairly new topics, I felt as though I would be able to connect them to concepts in school as we were discussing the risks of a Hothouse Earth Pathway and its effect, Biophysical Feedbacks, Tipping Cascades, Stabilized Earth Pathways, Human Feedbacks in the Earth System and the Building Resilience of in Rapidly Changing Earth Systems. 

 

I really feel that given the situation of the world now, even as we are affected by Covid19 the environment remains to be one of our top priorities and I would like to pursue this field of study in the future. 

 

Here’s another video that I found incredibly interesting. 

“Welcome to the Anthropocene”

https://vimeo.com/39048998

 

The first masterclass I attended was based on European Contemporary Challenges. The aim of the session was for students to adopt different standpoints which would help us grasp the diversity of opinions about European integration among political actors and scholars. Through the tutorial session, we focused on the key points of the nation-state, sovereignty and free movement. 

 

The masterclass touched base on terms and concepts such as nationalism, international organizations (IOs), regionalism and regional integration, realism, federalism and federalism to neo-functionalism. We also focused on the perspectives of Jean Monnet, David Mitrany and Ernt Haas. The session helped me to understand the role/involvement of governments, the formation of the European Union and the study of International Relations. 

 

What I found really engrossing about this session is how similar it was to the things I am studying in school for Global Politics, particularly, the concepts of sovereignty, liberalism and realism. I feel as though I can use the material I was given in the session to complement the second case study we studied in class, Power Politics: China and the South China Sea.

 

Here is a link to an interesting video on the formation of the European Union

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRwZyDTdCAc

 

Over the summer, I applied to the Paris Institute of Political Studies, also known as SciencesPo and I, fortunately, got admitted! SciencesPo is most well known for political science and international studies in the world and ranks 2nd (2020) globally for these courses, just after Harvard and Oxford. So, I consider myself lucky to have had the opportunity to participate in their Summer School programme. Six of the eight Presidents of the French Fifth Republic have attended Sciences Po Georges Pompidou, François Mitterrand, Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy (who did not graduate), François Hollande, and Emmanuel Macron. There are also other alumni such as Christian Dior, Roxanne Varza, Pascal Lamy and Boutros Boutros-Ghali. The time that I spent at SciencesPo was very enthralling and I was very excited to start the summer course not only because of its reputation but also because of the course choices. I felt as though they were very relevant to today’s world and to what I am learning in school at the moment. After this experience, I feel as though I will be able to make better connections with the subjects I am studying now. 

 

Throughout the course of two weeks, I had to attend four masterclasses, European Contemporary Challenges, Sustainable Development, Human Security and Populism vs Democracy. Before each of these masterclasses, we had a tutorial session which would give us context on what we would be learning and within these tutorials, we would have to give presentations as an extension of our learning. Additionally, we had to select an elective course, I had chosen Social Class: Understanding How Inequalities Shapes Our Lives. My tutorial teacher was Adrien Estève and my elective professor, Benjamin Brundu-Gonzalez. Throughout this course, we were not only graded through participation but also through a Petit (small) Oral and a written exam on the last day (the presentation for the tutorial session was also graded).