Events

To request special services, accommodations, or assistance for any events, please contact the Watson Institute at WatsonEvents@brown.edu or (401) 863-2809.

Events

To request special services, accommodations, or assistance for any events, please contact the Watson Institute at WatsonEvents@brown.edu or (401) 863-2809.

  • Join Livestream

    Graduating International and Public Affairs seniors present their senior thesis research findings on pressing global problems. Students are organized into thematic panels, followed by Q&A. Interesting, important, and timely research accomplished by some of our best students!

    All are welcome!

    This event will be livestreamed and recorded.

    Monday, May 5 Schedule:
    9:00 am Opening Remarks 
    9:20 am PANEL I: Governing Natural Resources: Challenges to the Renewable Energy Transition
    10:25 am PANEL II: Shaping Minds, Shaping Communities: Education, Ethnicity, and Political Influence
    12:00 pm PANEL III: Expanding Spheres of Justice: Perspectives from the U.S. and Abroad
    1:05 pm PANEL IV: Threats, Deception, and Influence on the Global Stage
    1:55 pm Closing Remarks

    More information on Day 2 of Watson Undergraduate Thesis Conference

    Thesis conference postser

    Learn more
  • Join Livestream

    Graduating International and Public Affairs seniors present their senior thesis research findings on pressing global problems. Students are organized into thematic panels, followed by Q&A. Interesting, important, and timely research accomplished by some of our best students!

    All are welcome!

    This event will be livestreamed and recorded.

    Tuesday, May 6 schedule:
    9:00 am Opening Remarks
    9:20 am PANEL V:Political Protest, Political Stability, State Capacity: Rethinking Causes and Effects
    10:25 am PANEL VI: Gender, Labor, and Migration in a Changing World
    11:30 am Closing Remarks
    Reception to follow

    Thesis conference postser

    Learn more

  • This new photography exhibition is sponsored by Art at Watson and features the photography of Leslie Starobin taken during a “roots journey” to Poland, coupled with memories from family members who survived the Holocaust.

    Exhibit open February 13 - May 30

    Stephen Robert ’62 Hall, 280 Brook Street, The Agora

    Artist statement:

    “Looming in the Shadows of Lodz” was inspired by a roots journey I made to Poland in 2019 with my husband and children. We traveled on the 75th anniversary of our relatives’ deportation to Auschwitz from the Lodz Ghetto, the last one to be liquidated by the Nazis. In Lodz, I photographed the Altman family residences, the cemetery where they hid from the Nazis, and the Radegast train station where they boarded cattle cars to the death camp.

    After visiting Auschwitz, we flew to Israel, where my husband’s aunt lives. At 95, Dorka

    Berger (née Altman) is the only relative alive to contribute to this multi-generational project. She poured over our photos and film footage, revealing new memories of the past.

    In July 1945, when 15-year-old Dorka penned her “Diary of Dwojra Altman,” she was haunted by the atrocities she witnessed, and she was mourning the loss of her parents. Now, she aspires to fulfill Jewish tradition — “l’haggid” — “And you should tell your children.”

    My “photo narratives” are framed by quotes I collected over three decades from Dorka and her older sister, Tola (my mother-in-law). By layering memories of the past onto visual depictions of the present, I am asking viewers to shift between text and image and between memory and place as they view these topographies of trauma across time and space.

    When speaking in Hebrew throughout our conversations, Dorka and Tola referred to Nazis as “Germans.” I chose to adhere to their language in the photo narratives as they were speaking about their past experiences.

    Made with generous support from the Combined Jewish Philanthropies Arts & Culture Community Impact Grant Fund, “Marching All Night: The Testimony of Dorka Berger née Altman” will screen on opening night. It can also be seen by scanning the QR code. Ori Segev, who is the third generation to inherit and tell this family story, filmed and edited the video.

  • Building on fifteen years of research and three book projects — Visions of Development (OUP, 2016), Educating for the Anthropocene (MIT Press, 2022) and Reimagining Development (Hurst, 2025; co-authored with Uma Pradhan) — this talk will argue that much contemporary development thinking and practice remains influenced by mid-20th century understandings of the future as linear and predetermined. To reimagine development for the current historical moment, what’s needed is a rethinking of the concept along the lines of ‘radical humility.’
    Bio: Peter Sutoris is Assistant Professor in Climate and Development at the Sustainability Research Institute, University of Leeds. He currently serves as Editor of Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education and Coordinating Editor of Degrowth Journal. He is a graduate of Cambridge University, where he was a Gates Cambridge Scholar, and of Dartmouth College. His current research focuses on imaginaries of the future, activist pedagogies of change and cultures of degrowth.

  • This new photography exhibition is sponsored by Art at Watson.  The photographs by Robert Nickelsberg offer a visual historical record of the first years of the civil war in El Salvador that is significant in the range and depth of its coverage of the conflict and illuminating in its critical view of the United States’ involvement, which was an important test of Cold War counterinsurgency strategy after the Vietnam war. The images of the violence and death form the foundational period that forced many Salvadorans to flee north to the U.S. creating the chaos and political gridlock along the U.S.-Mexican border.

    Exhibit open February 19 to May 30, 2025

    2nd Floor, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street

  • About the book:

    How the U.S. policy of competition with China is detrimental to democracy, peace, and prosperity—and how a saner approach is possible

    For close to a decade, the U.S. government has been preoccupied with the threat of China, fearing that the country will “eat our lunch,” in the words of Joe Biden. The United States has crafted its foreign and domestic policy to help constrain China’s military power and economic growth. Van Jackson and Michael Brenes argue that great-power competition with China is misguided and vastly underestimates the costs and risks that geopolitical rivalry poses to economic prosperity, the quality of democracy, and, ultimately, global stability.

    This in-depth assessment of the trade-offs and pitfalls of protracted competition with China reveals how such a policy exacerbates inequality, leads to xenophobia, and increases the likelihood of violence around the world. In addition, it distracts from the priority of addressing such issues as climate change while at the same time undercutting democratic pluralism and sacrificing liberty in the name of prevailing against an enemy “other.” Jackson and Brenes provide an informed and urgent critique of current U.S. foreign policy and a road map toward a saner, more democratically accountable strategy of easing tension and achieving effective diplomacy.

  • The China Initiative at the Watson Institute hosts a two-day conference on Defusing Militarized Rivalry Between the U.S. and China, May 8-9.

    Register here to attend.

    See the full program here.

    Statement of Purpose: During the last decade, U.S.-China relations have lurched dangerously into intensive militarized rivalry. This rivalry has the gravest possible implications for world peace, since the threat of war now looms over disputes in the South China Sea and also the ever-volatile Taiwan issue. As in the last Cold War, there is additionally the possibility that geopolitical rivalry will intensify disputes from Eastern Europe to the Arctic to the Middle East to Africa and throughout the Asia-Pacific. Moreover, this rivalry is already diverting resources and attention from other key issues, including global health and development, economic cooperation, and the climate crisis. This conference is intended as the first in a series and has five major goals: 1) to build a community of scholars dedicated to defusing U.S.-China rivalry; 2) to debate and refine arguments that favor mitigating geopolitical tensions between the superpowers; 3) to publish and disseminate the highest quality scholarship assessing the process of growing US-China militarized rivalry; 4) to develop concrete policy recommendations for curtailing military tensions among the two Asia-Pacific powers; and 5) to cultivate a new generation of experts that are capable of guiding US-China relations onto a more peaceful and collaborative path.

    Register here

  • The China Initiative at the Watson Institute hosts a two-day conference on Defusing Militarized Rivalry Between the U.S. and China, May 8-9.

    Register here to attend.

    See the full program here.

    Statement of Purpose: During the last decade, U.S.-China relations have lurched dangerously into intensive militarized rivalry. This rivalry has the gravest possible implications for world peace, since the threat of war now looms over disputes in the South China Sea and also the ever-volatile Taiwan issue. As in the last Cold War, there is additionally the possibility that geopolitical rivalry will intensify disputes from Eastern Europe to the Arctic to the Middle East to Africa and throughout the Asia-Pacific. Moreover, this rivalry is already diverting resources and attention from other key issues, including global health and development, economic cooperation, and the climate crisis. This conference is intended as the first in a series and has five major goals: 1) to build a community of scholars dedicated to defusing U.S.-China rivalry; 2) to debate and refine arguments that favor mitigating geopolitical tensions between the superpowers; 3) to publish and disseminate the highest quality scholarship assessing the process of growing US-China militarized rivalry; 4) to develop concrete policy recommendations for curtailing military tensions among the two Asia-Pacific powers; and 5) to cultivate a new generation of experts that are capable of guiding US-China relations onto a more peaceful and collaborative path.

    Register here

  • Join the Watson Institute for a conversation that examines the vital role of the rule of law in sustaining American democracy. Wendy J. Schiller, Interim Director of the Watson Institute, will moderate a discussion with Corey Brettschneider, Professor of Political Science, and Michael Vorenberg, Associate Professor of History.

  • Join via livestream

    Forum: 12:30–1:30pm at 85 Waterman St, Room 130 & Livestream

    Reception: 1:30–2:30pm at 85 Waterman St Room 101/102

    The federal landscape of climate law and policy is shifting rapidly. How are experts in public interest law, academia and government navigating these changes, and what legal and policy actions are emerging in response? Hear from a panel of leading voices in climate law and policy for an insightful discussion on the current outlook and evolving strategies. Engage with the panel, ask your questions, and continue the conversation at a post-forum reception hosted by the Institute at Brown for Environment & Society. Forum co-sponsored by the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.

    Featured speakers:

    • Michael Burger ’96, Executive Director, Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, Columbia University Law School
    • Peter Neronha P’19, P’22, Rhode Island Attorney General
    • Wendy Schiller, Howard R. Swearer Interim Director, Thomas J. Watson, Jr. Institute for International and Public Affairs & Alison S. Ressler Professor of Political Science
    • Moderated by Carrie Nordlund ’05 PhD, Lecturer in International and Public Affairs & Assistant Dean, Division of Pre-College and Undergraduate Programs

  • Who will finance the green transition? Are states too scared of the bond market? Why are private equity firms seemingly everywhere? Finance is at the heart of the political economy of capitalism, but studying it can be difficult. The good news: some of the brightest minds in the field  are eager to share their expertise at the second annual political economy of finance summer school, organized by Ben Braun (LSE) and Mark Blyth (Brown).

    Topics include:

    • Dollar Hegemony
    • Debt & Debt Relief in the U.S.
    • History of Financing Regimes
    • Institutional Capital Pools
    • Debt & Finance in the Global South
    • Rise of State Capital
    • Global Finance in the New Cold War
    • Finance & Decarbonization
    • Insurance & Climate Change
    • State Capital & Green Finance in China

    Eligibility

    The summer school is open to advanced (late dissertation) PhD candidates, post-doctoral fellows, and early career scholars from political science, sociology, financial history, economic geography, and economics.

    Applications

    Those interested in attending should submit a one-page cover letter, a writing sample (published article, working paper, dissertation chapter, etc.), and CV as a single PDF via thie link below.

    Application deadline: March 1st, 2025.

    Apply here
View full calendar

Join Our Email List

Receive regular email updates about Watson news, research and events.

Sign up