A Showcase Magazine Feature: http://www.trentu.ca/showcase/

Important Perspectives Outside of the Comfort Zone

The value of an international perspective is now, more than ever before, an academic essential, according to Dr. Haroon Akram-Lodhi, professor and chair of International Development Studies (IDS) at Trent. “Our connections with the rest of the world through social media are closer and tighter than they’ve ever been in human history and that means that as a scholar, it is critical to be informed by perspectives from outside your comfort zone - outside Canada, the U.S., and Western Europe - to be informed by perspectives from around the world,” he advocates.

Now Professor Akram-Lodhi has helped to create a rare international learning opportunity for Trent students through his connections to the prestigious International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam in The Hague, the Netherlands, where he taught for 12 years before coming to Trent. The result is a new program starting this fall that will open up two heavily subsidized fellowship positions to Trent students wishing to attend the intensive 15-month Master’s program.

Each year ISS welcomes 200 Master’s students, with 175 of them from Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and only 25 from North America and other countries. The international network that is formed from such a venture is, according to Prof. Akram-Lodhi, second to none, and will stand students in good stead for their future studies.

The Biggest Benefit

“I think the biggest benefit from studying at the ISS is that you end up having a very close relationship with the academics just as you do at Trent. The faculty is incredibly accessible,” he observes.

For Prof. Akram-Lodhi, there are no better students for this opportunity than Trent students. “Trent students are the best I’ve ever had in my professional career and teaching them is an absolute joy,” he maintains. “These students go on to do such amazing things. They are passionately committed to their field of study and they really want to make a difference.”

Facing the Global Challenges

“It’s incredibly important to have an international perspective at this point because it seems to me that the three great challenges facing the planet as a whole are international challenges: the challenge of climate change, the challenge of rising global inequality, and the challenge of combating poverty, all three of which are very closely interconnected and cannot be addressed by nations on their own. We have to take a global perspective in addressing these challenges.”

Posted on Tuesday, April 9, 2013.