Student Spotlight: Ariela Rosenzweig ’24

Ariela Rosenzweig ’24 explains how her experience in Sarajevo was invaluable to her IAPA studies.

What is the title of your project?

Internship at the Post Conflict Research Center

Where did you travel to? 

Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

What was funding used for?

Internship

How did this experience contribute to your studies in IAPA?

This summer I received a Watson grant to participate as an intern at the Post-Conflict Research Center in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The PCRC is an NGO dedicated to peace education, transitional justice, and post-conflict reconciliation. I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to learn from my peers and supervisors at the PCRC and to have gained an invaluable understanding of the post-war space in Bosnia and Herzegovina. During my time in Sarajevo, I spent my work hours synthesizing materials from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia archives, reporting for the local media platform Balkan Diskurs, and assisting in preparations for the Srebrenica Heroines conference. I also spent my free time exploring Sarajevo, hiking in the surrounding mountains, and picking up a few words of Bosnian! 

My experience at the PCRC was extremely connected to my education at Brown. As a double concentrator in Religious Studies and International and Public Affairs on the Security Track, my main interest is in post-conflict reconciliation with a particular focus on religious and ethnically motivated violence. My time in Sarajevo allowed me to gain a deeper familiarity with international conflict prevention and resolution measures that have been deployed across national settings including the international court system and techniques of transitional justice. I hope to continue to build on the knowledge I gained this summer and to potentially write my honors thesis using some of the insights and connections I acquired in Bosnia and Herzegovina.