Weiru Ye

I was born and raised in Wenzhou, a small coastal city in China. Ever since I was a kid, I remained interested in seeing what is out there in the wild world. At the age of 15, I first attended high school in North Carolina. I was lucky enough to attend UWC Costa Rica and it was my UWC experience that eventually motivated me to pursue my interests in the field of international development. And now, I’m a raising junior at Middlebury College, majoring in both Religion and Anthropology. I will also be studying abroad in Nepal in the 2017 fall, exploring the intersections of my various academic interests and gaining more first-hand experiences with South Asia. Outside of classroom, I’m highly involved in a variety of activities that promote inter-cultural communications both on Middlebury campus and in the larger Middlebury local community. My interests in conflicts and peace resolution were sparked first by learning about the ethnic tension in China, and for the first time recognizing my privilege of simply being the majority Han-Chinese. As I started to reflect more on my own privilege and positionality, I also became interested in engaging with more on-the-ground work that brings tangible changes to communities affected by various conflicts on the world.