RCGA Thematic Programs
The programs sponsored by the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs encompass six areas of global and international concern. Led by RCGA Faculty Fellows, these thematic programs host events that encourage discussion on a range of global topics, support courses in diverse majors and interdisciplinary programs, and help form the intellectual foundation for RCGA’s co-curricular programming.
The program on Global Economics explores how international and global economics have affected the world—its regions, countries, societies, and people—in the past and present, and how they may do so in the future.
RCGA Faculty Fellow Conveners:
David Munro
Sunder Ramaswamy
Germán Reyes
The program on Global Health and Medicine engages practitioners and scholars whose work bears on complex issues that affect the well-being of people worldwide. Topics include pandemics, health care infrastructure and health systems, cultural and sociopolitical aspects of contagion and public health, linkages between health and development, health consequences of conflict, prevention and treatment of sickness across cultures, and innovative solutions to enhance global health.
RCGA Faculty Fellow Conveners:
Pam Berenbaum
Kristin Bright
The program on Global and International History presents lectures, panels, and workshops on important aspects of global and international history. Its presentations focus on relationships, connections, transfers, and movements between nations or regions of the world; they link historical events and developments to contemporary ones, and thereby employ the past to illuminate the present and future.
RCGA Faculty Fellow Conveners:
Rebecca Mitchell
Max Ward
The program on Global Trends in Autocracy and Democracy features lectures, panels, and workshops on the consolidation or erosion of democracy broadly understood. Key topics include democratic backsliding, democracy and autocracy promotion, elections and their integrity, and the social media/information landscape.
RCGA Faculty Fellow Conveners:
Sebnem Gumuscu (on leave AY 2024-25)
Bert Johnson
Vejay Verghese
The program on Power, Wealth and Global Political Economy seeks to promote dialogue with policy experts and scholars in the field of global political economy in order to enhance understanding of how (1) economic instruments promote geopolitical goals, (2) national security strategies advance economic interests, (3) foreign policies influence global economic and political stability, and (4) external shocks such as pandemics can upend or call into question the policies, strategies, and instruments that states, societies, and people rely on.
RCGA Faculty Fellow Convener:
Obie Porteous
Gary Winslett
The program on Security and Global Affairs features lectures, panels, and presentations on global security matters—from traditional issues of war and peace, to nontraditional security challenges in the realms of cyberspace, the environment, food security and beyond. The program examines the causal factors behind these threats over time and explores their possible solutions.
RCGA Faculty Fellow Conveners:
Natalie Chawalisz
Kemi Fuentes-George
Jeffrey Lunstead