By: Maria Wilkinson
At the International Master’s Program in International Studies (IMPIS) you can find a variety of countries represented and student’s sharing a common interest in international affairs. IMPIS students are educated at one of the top schools in Taiwan for International Relations Studies. This Master’s program accepts twenty international students and seven Taiwanese students each year to join.
Students that attend the IMPIS program share unique life stories and research interests. In classrooms, discussions are lively with vast perspectives. Cultural sharing becomes a natural bonding experience.
▲Photo by IMPIS
The following are five interviews with current IMPIS students. These five students share their experiences coming to IMPIS and the research that they plan to partake in during their studies.
Chantel Pemberton
Originally from Saint Kitts and Nevis, a Caribbean country with diplomatic ties to Taiwan, Chantel came to Taiwan to learn Chinese six years ago. Chantel then studied Chinese Language and Culture for International Studies at National Taiwan Normal University in their undergraduate program. It was at National Taiwan Normal University that she first tried dragon boat racing. Later, one of her teams placed third in a race against other crews that represent Taiwan.
Dragon boat racing is a testament to Chantel’s ability to make a goal and go after it. After finishing her undergraduate studies, Chantel knew she wanted to eventually become a diplomat, so she set her eyes on IMPIS to help her attain this goal.
From her Bachelor's studies, Chantel is still interested in culture and language. That is why her research focus for her thesis will be on cultural studies and cultural diplomacy. Chantel recalls trying to do presentations about her home country for her undergrad and having to call home to find out basic cultural information such as holidays. Even small pieces of information about culture are not easily accessible from online sources.
Studying cultural diplomacy is a chance for Chantel to become better connected with her African roots. This connection was taken away from her and many others during the colonialization period of the Caribbean islands. Being told that Caribbean people’s history started at slavery is not the full story and it is not the narrative people from the Caribbean should be told to live with.
Chantel’s research will be a critique of cultural diplomacy, to understand what the global north has to gain from disseminating African and Caribbean culture. Under the lens of World Systems Theory, Chantel seeks to argue a cultural diplomacy of creativity. Chantel says that creativity is a sustainable, non-exhausting resource. Her research not only will add to the information about the Caribbean islands, but it will be important for the world to learn of alternative forms of cultural diplomacy from an inside perspective.
Víctor López
Víctor is a 24-year-old self-identified internationalist originally from Honduras. One that loves singing and playing his guitar. He knew he wanted to be an internationalist in 9th grade when he represented South Korea at a Model UN meeting. That’s also how Victor knew he wanted to be at IMPIS.
Víctor enrolled in IMPIS in the Fall of 2021. He describes an internationalist as someone well-informed about what is happening in the world, understands international relations, and tries to be rational in the face of conflict. All are characteristics well found at IMPIS.
Before Víctor entered IMPIS, he was an international cooperation analyst at the Ministry of Foreign Relations and International Cooperation of Honduras. As he explained this work, he describes the uncanniness of joining IMPIS now and truly understands the importance of his prior work.
Víctor is currently in the process of writing his thesis for graduation. Due to the human rights violations that he has witnessed in his home country, Honduras, he has found inspiration from some cases that have become the focus of his research. Víctor is concerned with LGBTQ+ issues. His research takes a transnational rights advocacy approach to the topic of transgender rights. Víctor’s research seeks to understand the pressure from outside groups that target society from the top down. This research will be important to learn from for Honduras LGBTQ+ communities and LGBTQ+ communities around the world.
Víctor brings life to IMPIS with his kindness and singing. He is likely to be found gathering classmates and leading peers to become friends. If you see Víctor around, make sure to say hello.
Erick Armando Navarrete Segovia
From 2017 to 2022, Erick worked for Intéllite, a consultant firm for local government and parliamentary actors in Mexico City. First as a strategic analyst and then a strategic analyst coordinator, Erick specialized in human rights and national security issues.
Upon graduating with a Bachelor’s in International Relations at the National Autonomous University of Mexico with honors, Erick worked for a number of years. After five years working for Intéllite and building upon his professional abilities, Erick had the sense that he was ready to make his research have a wider-reaching impact.
That’s how Erick was led to Taiwan and IMPIS. Courses such as security management and analysis, crisis management, and conflict management drew his eye to IMPIS. The courses he found at IMPIS were ones he never took in his undergraduate program. Erick had said this program checked a lot of boxes for him but joked that if he had known about the rain in Taipei, he might have thought twice.
Since Erick is a first-year student at IMPIS, he has some time to decide what research topic he will focus on for his thesis. Though, he knows that in some form it will be related to Transnational Crime or Human Trafficking.
Erick believes that his time at IMPIS will help him with the next chapter of his life. That may be working for an international NGO or starting his own NGO of tracking violence. Either way, while Erick is in Taiwan, he plans to take advantage of the exercise-friendly city and healthy lifestyle of Taiwan.
Pauliina Eerika Vähäkangas
Pauliina was born in Finland but grew up in Tanzania for around seven years. Tanzania was where Pauliina learned English and gained her worldly perspective. Pauliina feels that learning a language or learning about another country can be learned from afar, but empathy for another place only comes once you are there on the ground surrounded by it.
Pauliina was very intrigued during her time in Tanzania. She remembers asking her father at a young age why Tanzania was so different from Finland. She describes being unphased by driving past zebras on the road while taking trips around southern Africa, an experience her classmates in Finland probably didn’t have every day.
Later on, when Pauliina was 16, her father and she went on a hike in India. A hike that was abruptly halted by a monsoon. While in High School, Pauliina traveled to Beijing, China for a month to learn Chinese and to South Korea for two months to volunteer as an English teacher in a community center.
After Pauliina finished High School, she traveled to South Korea for her undergraduate studies at Yonsei University. With a focus on diplomacy and politics in her undergrad, Pauliina then sought to further her studies at IMPIS and to improve her Mandarin language ability.
Next semester Pauliina will take a semester off to intern at the Finnish Embassy in Seoul, South Korea. When she returns to IMPIS to write her research, her focus will be on diplomacy, conflict resolutions, and/or peace negotiations with a focus on gender issues.
Earn Sataphat Silsawang
Earn’s first time abroad for an extended period of time was in Taiwan. From Bangkok, Thailand, Earn minored in Chinese studies during his undergraduate studies and wanted to improve his language ability. Once arriving in Taiwan, Earn asked his parents if he could move to study in Taiwan. Since Earn was already enrolled at Thammasat University for International Affairs, his parents were not thrilled with the idea.
During his undergraduate studies, what kept Earn ‘alive’ was activism. Thammasat University is famous for activism in Thai history. Earn and his friends organized many campaigns for social issues. This experience made Earn appreciate this kind of work.
After finishing Earn’s undergraduate studies, he took a gap year to intern for Action AID India, South-South Solidarity Hub. After his internship, Earn learned that the best way to improve Thailand was through the policy-making process which would be more direct and faster.
So, Earn took a position as a project officer for Thailand International Cooperation Agency under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Thailand. This experience focused on development issues and taught Earn how to work with advocacy groups and the government. His later jobs also worked with the government and policy-making process but found that most of the work was for the government circle and the policies were elite-centric.
That experience led Earn to Amnesty International Thailand. During 2020 and 2021, a large protest took place in Thailand. Earn felt this was a good time to push forward from the people’s side. Though, from this work, Earn felt he needed deeper knowledge to benefit his job.
That’s how finally Earn returned back to Taiwan for his studies. For Earn, the two tracks of international development and international politics IMPIS provides were necessary for the direction that he was interested in. Future research at IMPIS will include a human rights perspective, comparing Taiwan with other Asian countries to see how Asia can learn from Taiwan.
The above five students all originate from various origins. Though a similar passion for people and life is found to transcend each classmate. Students that come to IMPIS have an interest in the world and care about the issues that affect their communities. If you also find yourself relating to the IMPIS classmates, maybe this program might be the right fit for you too. The application to apply for 2023 Fall enrollment begins February 16th to March 22nd. For any questions or concerns, please contact the Office of International Cooperation.
▲Photo by IMPIS
