Around the World in Seven Days: MIP Students Travel the Globe to Practice Policymaking

Around the World in Seven Days: MIP Students Travel the Globe to Practice Policymaking

Each spring, second year students in the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy spread out across the globe to work on projects affecting communities from Sierra Leone to Mongolia, New Zealand, and beyond.
A seven picture collage of travel photos taken by the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy Class of 2024 during their spring internships through the Policy Change Studio. Students from the Class of 2024 of the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy traveled the globe over their spring break to meet with partners of the Policy Change Studio and research their projects in the field. Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy

For many, spring break is synonymous with time away on laid back beaches. But for the hardworking students in the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy Class of 2024, the break from their normal classes was the perfect opportunity to meet with partners all over the world and conduct field research for their capstone projects.

Each year, second year master's students participate in a two quarter course called the Policy Change Studio. Built on the idea that hands-on experience navigating the realities of bureaucracy, resource constraints, and politics is just as important for students as book learning and theory, this capstone course pairs groups of students with governments, NGOs, and research institutes around the world to practice crafting policy solutions that help local communities.

From agricultural policy in Mongolia to public transportation in Ghana, cyber resilience in Taiwan and AI governance in Brazil, keep reading to see how our students have been making an impact!

 

Brazil

Poramin Insom, Justin Yates, Thay Graciano, and Rosie Lebel traveled to Rio de Janeiro to work with the Institute for Technology and Society to investigate ways to design a governance strategy for digital and AI tools in public defenders' offices.

Artificial Intelligence promises to transform Public Defenders in Brazil, as seen throughout our fieldwork trip in Rio de Janeiro. Our team spent the week discussing the integration of AI in legal practices with defenders from 13 states and experts from Instituto de Tecnologia e Sociedade (ITS Rio) and COPPE / UFRJ. We focused on developing AI tools tailored to reduce administrative burdens, enabling defenders to concentrate on advocacy. With nearly 80% of Brazilians entitled to free legal aid, AI can automate routine tasks like document categorization and grammatical corrections.

Significant challenges relate to privacy and potential biases in algorithms, underscoring the need for collaborative governance to ethically implement these solutions. Thus, a unified technological strategy is crucial. We hope that through our work, we can create a collaborative governance framework that will facilitate the development of digital and AI tools, ultimately helping citizens at large. We appreciated the opportunity to learn from incredibly dedicated professionals who are excited to find new ways to jointly develop tools.

 

China-Taiwan

Sara Shah, Elliot Stewart, Nickson Quak, and Gaute Friis traveled to Taiwan to gain a firsthand perspective on China’s foreign information manipulation and influence (FIMI), with a specific focus on the role that commercial firms are playing in supporting these campaigns.

We met with government agencies, legislators, military and national security officials, private sector actors, and civil society figures within Taiwan's vibrant ecosystem for countering Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI). On the ground, the team found that China’s FIMI operations are evolving and increasingly subtle and complex. As generative AI empowers malign actors, our team assessed that the battle against sophisticated, state-sponsored influence campaigns requires a more integrated and strategic approach that spans legal, technological, and societal responses.

 

Ghana

Skylar Coleman and Maya Rosales traveled to Accra and Cape Coast in Ghana while Rosie Ith traveled to Washington DC and Toronto to better understand the transit ecosystem in Ghana and the financial and governing barriers to executing accessible and reliable transportation.

During their time in Ghana, Skylar and Maya met with various stakeholders in the Ghanaian transportation field, including government agencies, ride-share apps, freight businesses, academics, and paratransit operators. Presently, paratransit operators, known locally as "tro tros," dominate the public transportation space and with a variety of meetings with their union officials and drivers in terminals around Accra they were able to learn about the nature of the tro tro business and their relationships — and lack thereof — with the government.

In D.C., Rosie met with development organizations and transport officials and attended the World Bank’s Transforming Transportation Conference and their paratransit and finance roundtable. Collectively, they learned about the issues facing the transport industry primarily related to problems surrounding bankability, infrastructure and vehicle financing, and lack of government collaboration with stakeholders. Insights from the trip spurred their team away from conventional physical interventions and toward solutions that will bridge stakeholder gaps and improve transport governance and policy implementation.

 

Mongolia

Ashwini Thakare, Kelsey Freeman, Olivia Hampsher-Monk, and Sarah Brakebill-Hacke traveled to Mongolia and Washington D.C. to better understand grassland degradation, the role that livestock overgrazing plays in exacerbating the problem, and what is currently being done to address it.

Our team had the opportunity to go to Mongolia and Washington DC where we conducted over twenty structured interviews with a variety of stakeholders. We spoke with people including local and central government officials, officials of international organizations, representatives from mining and cashmere industries, community organizations, academic researchers, herder households, NGOs and Mongolian politicians. Though we knew the practice of nomadic herding is core to Mongolia’s national identity, we didn’t fully realize just how integrated this practice, and the problem of grassland degradation, are in the economy, society and politics of Mongolia.

In the run-up to Mongolia’s election in June, this issue was especially top of mind to those we interviewed. Everyone we spoke with had some form of direct connection with herding, mostly through their own families. Our interviews, as well as being in Ulaanbaatar and the surrounding provinces, helped us to deepen our understanding of the context in which possible interventions operate. Most especially we observed all the extensive work that is being done to tackle grassland degradation and that institutionalizing and supporting these existing approaches could help tackle this issue.

 

New Zealand

Andrea Purwandaya, Chase Lee, Raul Ruiz, and Sebastian Ogando traveled to Auckland and Wellington in New Zealand to support Netsafe’s efforts in combating online harms among 18- to 30-year-olds of Chinese descent. This partnership aims to enhance online safety messages to build safer online environments for everyone.

While on the ground, our team met with members from Chinese student organizations and professional associations to gather primary evidence on the online harms they face. We also met with Tom Udall, the U.S. Ambassador to New Zealand, his team, and university faculty to brainstorm solutions to tackle this problem. We learned about the prevalent use of “super-apps” beyond WeChat in crowdsourcing solutions and support, and were able to better grasp the complexities of the relationships between public safety organizations and the focus demographic. In retrospect, it was insightful to hear from actors across the public, private, and civic sectors about the prevalence of online harms and how invested major stakeholders are in finding common solutions through a joint, holistic approach.

 

Sierra Leone

Felipe Galvis-Delgado, Ibilola Owoyele, Javier Cantu, and Pamella Ahairwe traveled to Freetown, Sierra Leone to analyze headwinds affecting the country's solar mini grid industry as well as potential avenues to bolster the industry's current business models.

Our team met with private sector mini grid developers, government officials from the public utilities commission and energy ministry, and rural communities benefiting from mini grid electrification. While we saw first-hand the significant impact that solar mini grids can have on communities living in energy poverty, we also developed a deeper understanding of the macroeconomic, market, and policy conditions preventing the industry from reaching its full potential of providing energy access to millions of Sierra Leoneans. Moving forward, we will explore innovative climate finance solutions and leverage our policy experience to develop feasible recommendations specific to the local environment.

 

Taiwan

Dwight Knightly, Hamzah Daud, Francesca Verville, and Tabatha Anderson traveled to Taipei, Keelung, and Hsinchu, Taiwan to explore the island democracy’s current posture and future preparedness regarding the security of its critical communications infrastructure—with a special focus on its undersea fiber-optic cables.

During our travels around Taiwan and our many meetings, we were surprised with the lack of consensus among local decision-makers regarding which potential solution pathways were likely to yield the most timely and effective results. These discrepancies often reflected the presence of information asymmetries and divergent institutional interests across stakeholders—both of which run counter to Taiwan’s most urgent strategic priorities. Revising existing bureaucratic authorities and facilitating the spread of technical expertise would enable—and enrich—investment in future resilience.

While we anticipated that structural inefficiencies would impede change to some degree, our onsite interviews gave us a clearer picture of where policy interventions will likely have the most positive effect for Taiwan's defense. With the insights from our fieldwork, we intend to spend the remainder of the quarter exploring new leads, delving into theory of change, and designing a set of meaningful policy recommendations.

 

The Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy

Want to learn more? MIP holds admission events throughout the year, including graduate fairs and webinars, where you can meet our staff and ask questions about the program.

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