About IPID
History
President
My vision for IPID is to grow and fill out our young 2-year old student organization through your involvement in our standing committees and potential sub-committees (such as for specific events like the semesterly student speaker conference) as outlined in our Constitution. I would love to see you take the initiative to help us build IPID with your ideas, leading the planning of an event, or helping us better collaborate with other student organizations. Even better, I hope you run for a committee chair in the fall elections or for an officer position in the spring! I am eager to discuss, debate with, and learn from you!
Vice President
Brandon Wu, Master of Public Policy candidate
Secretary
Last year, as the Programming Committee Co-Chair, I helped to organize an IPID Open House, two discussion panels on Sierra Leone and Iraq. More recently, I've been concentrating on strengthening IPID's organizational structure to have more members engaged in programming, as we expand our membership and pursue our goals across campus. I'm looking forward to the addition of new members whose experience, energy and ideas will invigorate the group's capacity, imagination and ever-expanding potential. Let's make IPID 2011-12 the best year yet.
Treasurer
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on International Development (IPID) is a newly formed student initiative linking graduate students, scholars, and practitioners with interests in development. IPID also sustains an online student-edited journal, Reconsidering Development, in addition to the IPID student group. These activities constitute an ongoing cross-department and cross-sector endeavor meant to continually grow and evolve.
The student group and online journal provide graduate students with opportunities to develop skills in leadership and to promote their scholarship in the field of international development. IPID's mission and goal seeks to continually explore and expand upon three initial research questions:
- How does an interdisciplinary perspective shift our conceptualization of international development?
- What are the trends and issues affecting current approaches to international development?
- What is the future of this interdisciplinary field (including the role of the international community)?
It is fitting that the founding charter IPID members and advisors come from departments at the University of Minnesota with a tradition of cross-disciplinary and cross-sector scholarship and practice, including the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, the program in Comparative and International Development Education, and the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change.
Student Leaders
The IPID student group's current leaders are:
PresidentPeter Ehresmann, Master of Development Practice candidate
I'm Peter, or "2-meter Peter" rather, as I was called in my 2nd home and past life in China and am one of the 2nd year Masters of Development Practice (MDP) pioneers. Prior to returning home to attend Humphrey, I spent 4 years teaching English in Chinese universities in Jilin City and Beijing, breaking up my time there by envisioning and organizing a 14-month musical bicycle expedition of 5, called FueledByRice.org , from Beijing to Paris via India to make a small yet tangible contribution to building intercultural understanding & peace. Since interning and researching my undergraduate thesis in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya on a Human Rights Fellowship in 2003, I have been deeply considering the politics of poverty, environmental destruction, and the ethics of the lifestyle choices we all make as the privileged few: How do we actually balance economic growth with environmental sustainability? Just what ought our end goals of international development be? I most recently spent my summer (2011) in Cairo Egypt working on garbage and recycling for the MDP field experience. I earned my BA in Political Science at St. John's University, MN, and love bicycling, the outdoors, photography, music, and living abroad.
I'm Peter, or "2-meter Peter" rather, as I was called in my 2nd home and past life in China and am one of the 2nd year Masters of Development Practice (MDP) pioneers. Prior to returning home to attend Humphrey, I spent 4 years teaching English in Chinese universities in Jilin City and Beijing, breaking up my time there by envisioning and organizing a 14-month musical bicycle expedition of 5, called FueledByRice.org , from Beijing to Paris via India to make a small yet tangible contribution to building intercultural understanding & peace. Since interning and researching my undergraduate thesis in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya on a Human Rights Fellowship in 2003, I have been deeply considering the politics of poverty, environmental destruction, and the ethics of the lifestyle choices we all make as the privileged few: How do we actually balance economic growth with environmental sustainability? Just what ought our end goals of international development be? I most recently spent my summer (2011) in Cairo Egypt working on garbage and recycling for the MDP field experience. I earned my BA in Political Science at St. John's University, MN, and love bicycling, the outdoors, photography, music, and living abroad.
My vision for IPID is to grow and fill out our young 2-year old student organization through your involvement in our standing committees and potential sub-committees (such as for specific events like the semesterly student speaker conference) as outlined in our Constitution. I would love to see you take the initiative to help us build IPID with your ideas, leading the planning of an event, or helping us better collaborate with other student organizations. Even better, I hope you run for a committee chair in the fall elections or for an officer position in the spring! I am eager to discuss, debate with, and learn from you!
Vice PresidentBrandon Wu, Master of Public Policy candidate
I'm a second-year Master of Public Policy student at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, concentrating in Global Policy. Prior to coming to the Humphrey, I worked as a researcher and grantwriter at Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch in Washington, DC, doing policy analysis and advocacy around U.S. trade policy from 2005-2010. I have a B.A. in sociology from Yale University, where I studied comparative historical sociology of international development.
My current research centers on the conflict between national economic policy in Colombia, including the proposed U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, and the economic, social and cultural rights of historically marginalized Afro-Colombian communities. I spent my summer in Colombia working on this research, and related activism, in Bogotá and the conflict zone of Urabá. I'm now turning this research into a master's thesis and various advocacy papers related to the Colombia FTA.
I'm interested in looking at development through the lens of addressing global inequality by challenging the power structures and entrenched interests that benefit from the status quo. I blog about this sort of thing at Power and Participation. I'm also super excited to share and learn from other members of IPID over the course of this year!
Secretary Autumn Durfey, Master of Public Health candidate
I am a second year Master of Environmental Public Health student with an interdisciplinary concentration in global health at the School of Public Health. My studies have focused on how environmental factors influence disease and health status. Domestically, my interests are focused on the underserved and ethnic minority populations concerning environmental exposures leading to toxicity and disease pathology. Globally, my interests involve the relationship between human health and the health of the local ecology. This past summer, I did research on the Island of Mfangano, Kenya, where the HIV prevalence is over 30%. Through my research, I studied how infectious disease and epidemiology, in the context of relational thinking, provide a comprehensive picture, which takes into account the culture, social structure, environmental and economic state of both the individual and the community. As secretary with IPID, I look forward to this year's events and am excited to be a member of such an enriching and diverse interdisciplinary group!
Officer At-Large
Chet Bodin, Master of Public Policy candidate
Greetings! My name is Chet Bodin. I'm the current Officer At-Large in IPID, and a second year MPP student at the Humphrey School studying global policy. For me IPID is about personal development as much as community or economic development. I believe most of us understand there are fundamental problems with the world, and see evidence of that in the suffering, conflict and human rights failures that exist. With this in mind, I maintain that the lasting growth we seek, arrives best when as aspire to integrate with others. By sharing ideas, and making a personal commitment to work and learn together, we are empowered to pursue change with different cultures, nations and philosophies- not in spite of them.
Personally, I value a socioeconomic model that puts a premium on humanity, social awareness, public service and work ethic. At IPID, I aim to understand the values of others to cultivate introspection, and learn how to apply development policy that's in step with people, their beliefs, their communities and surroundings.
Greetings! My name is Chet Bodin. I'm the current Officer At-Large in IPID, and a second year MPP student at the Humphrey School studying global policy. For me IPID is about personal development as much as community or economic development. I believe most of us understand there are fundamental problems with the world, and see evidence of that in the suffering, conflict and human rights failures that exist. With this in mind, I maintain that the lasting growth we seek, arrives best when as aspire to integrate with others. By sharing ideas, and making a personal commitment to work and learn together, we are empowered to pursue change with different cultures, nations and philosophies- not in spite of them.
Personally, I value a socioeconomic model that puts a premium on humanity, social awareness, public service and work ethic. At IPID, I aim to understand the values of others to cultivate introspection, and learn how to apply development policy that's in step with people, their beliefs, their communities and surroundings.
Last year, as the Programming Committee Co-Chair, I helped to organize an IPID Open House, two discussion panels on Sierra Leone and Iraq. More recently, I've been concentrating on strengthening IPID's organizational structure to have more members engaged in programming, as we expand our membership and pursue our goals across campus. I'm looking forward to the addition of new members whose experience, energy and ideas will invigorate the group's capacity, imagination and ever-expanding potential. Let's make IPID 2011-12 the best year yet.
Treasurer
Logan Dumaine, Master of Public Policy candidate
Strategic Relations Chair
Ameido Amevor, Master of Development Practice candidate
Programming Co-Chair
Kirsten Selvig, Law Student
Programming Co-Chair
Gilles Amadou Ouedraogo, Master of Development Practice candidate
Information Technology and Communication Chair
Rachel Garaghty, Master of Public Policy candidate
Committees:
- Programming committee - Handles all planning and arrangements for guest speakers, programming and trips.
- Fundraising and finance committee - Initiates and facilitates IPID fundraising efforts in coordination with all other committees.
- Outreach and Strategic committee - Initiates and sustains IPID outreach efforts among University students, faculty and staff and all outside parties.
- Research and writing committee - Gathers and generates content, citations, and direct links to information of interest to IPID members that preserves and strengthens IPID's purpose as a forum for interdisciplinary and cross-sector work and scholarship in development.
- Information technology and communication (ITC) committee - Builds and sustains the IPID website and content.
