The European Studies Center invites you to an open series with hybrid and asynchronous forms. The series takes participants from a shared research foundation in European policy to a finished policy brief published in the Interdisciplinary Review of ValEUs (IRV).

The series teaches the craft of writing for impact and how to transform complex political, economic, and cultural questions into clear, concise, and persuasive policy briefs that reach governmental, non-governmental, and international audiences.

Participants will learn to: 
Identify and define a policy problem with precision 
Conduct concise, evidence-based analysis grounded in real research 
Communicate complex issues in accessible, policy-oriented formats 
Develop practical, actionable recommendations for decision-makers.

Who Should Participate:
Faculty and researchers seeking to broaden their academic work
Humanities Scholars
Graduate and undergraduate students
Educators (Continued-Education Certificate)
Professionals interested in public policy, international affairs, transatlantic relations/European Studies.

No prior policy-writing experience is required.

Interested in studying Russian abroad? Looking for funding to make it possible? Come learn about scholarships and funding opportunities available to Pitt students! All students interested in Russian language, culture, and study abroad are welcome to attend. At this session, you will learn about opportunities from: the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (REEES); the Nationality Rooms & Intercultural Exchange Programs; Pitt's Summer Language Institute (SLI); SRAS; and American Councils for International Education.

Join the Italian Department for a meet-and-greet and light refreshments in the Global Hub.

This lecture is part of the Socialist Studies Seminar. 

As Soviet forces returned to Bessarabia in 1944, many Holocaust perpetrators sought to evade postwar accountability through flight, concealment, or crossing the Romanian border. This paper follows forty perpetrators implicated in the July 1941 massacre of over 300 Jews in a Bessarabian village, who were split between Romanian and Soviet jurisdictions by the postwar border. What determined whether evasion succeeded: citizenship, mobility, local ties, or the structures of the pursuing states? One crime, one cohort, divided by a single border. What accounted for their radically different fates?

Co-sponsored by the Department of History (Carnegie Mellon University) and REEES, the World History Center, and the Jewish Studies Program (University of Pittsburgh).

In partnership with the American-Hellenic Foundation of Western Pennsylvania and the European Art Center in Greece (EUARCE), the Greek Nationality Room's commemoration and celebration of the 250th Anniversary of America unearths previously unknown and underdiscussed facets of its founding. From Revolution to Constitution, Greeks played direct and indirect roles on land and at sea even before 1776.

As we celebrate those unknown Greeks, we also consider the 250th Anniversary of Thomas Paine’s landmark essay “Common Cause”. How ancient Greek thought shaped it, but also how ancient Greek thought tempered it. This synthesis culminated in the Constitution of the United States of America.

With the contribution of distinguished invited guests, this synthesis is discussed, distilled and debated. Is it stable in a modern America facing internal and international challenges?

Last, the distinguished invited guests are asked to consider if and how this synthesis travelled back to a nascent modern Greek state following the Revolutionary War and how the Greek Church acted as the bridge to stabilize the synthesis between the Fire and the Pillar, represented by Paine and Aristotle/Kapodistrias.

With the overarching theme “America 250: The Aegean Arc”, we invite you this October to a first-in-history exploration of the unknown Greeks in the American Revolution, the “Fire” of Paine’s “Common Cause” and what it means to America 250 years lager. Additionally, how Paine and Aristotle were synthesized through the stabilizing bridge of the Church in Greece and how this can help nurture a more perfect American union.

Pitt students and families: Join the University Center for International Studies and Pitt Global for a chance to sample some snacks from around the world and learn about all things global, including study abroad and study away programs, professional development opportunities, area and global studies certificates and the Global Distinction, and scholarships for global experiences!

“One conversation can change a life—including your own.”

During the Latinx & Hispanic Month Celebration at the University of Pittsburgh, discover how local nonprofits are supporting communities across the Pittsburgh region and learn how your time, talents, and passion can make a lasting impact. Explore volunteer opportunities, connect with community leaders, and find your place in creating positive change. What if just a few hours of your time could change someone's future? Join us, connect with your community, and enjoy some empanadas and pão de queijo while you learn about ways to get involved!

The Pitt Italian Program hosts Dagmawi Yimer, an Ethiopian Italian filmmaker known for documenting migrant testimony, for a screening of two short films, including Like a Man on Earth.

Interested in studying, researching, interning, or working abroad? Representatives from the Office of National Scholarships, NRIEP, Global Experiences Office, and Area Studies programs will introduce students to funding opportunities that can help make a global experience possible.

Faculty Professional Development Workshop (Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad, Senegal 2025)
Date: Friday, October 16, 2026
Time: 9:00 AM – 4:00 PM (schedule below)
Location: 5601. Posvar Hall
Host: Center for African Studies, University Center for International Studies
Open to: Pitt faculty, staff, students, PCHE, and community college faculty
Register: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSczJAHaKxOPs-XOd5fQL5wxHI4KeVhj...

Description: A day-long workshop led by Pitt faculty who participated in the Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad program in Senegal, summer 2025. The day explores decolonized approaches to teaching and researching Africa. It includes concurrent breakout sessions, a cultural lunch with African cuisine and a dance performance, closing group reflection, and a film screening. Full session details to be posted after September 16.

Schedule:
9:00 – 9:30 AM: Meet & Greet
9:30 – 10:00 AM: Day overview and introductions
10:00 – 11:30 AM: Workshop Session I
11:30 AM – 12:30 PM: Cultural immersion lunch
12:30 – 2:00 PM: Workshop Session II
2:00 – 2:30 PM: Closing session and group reflection
3:00 PM onward: Film screening

Questions? Please get in touch with AfricanStudies@pitt.edu

We are pleased to announce a co-sponsored event by the Center for American Politics and Society and the European Studies Center, featuring Professor Mitchell Smith of Pennsylvania State University. He will deliver a lecture titled "The Great Perceptual Divide: Identity and Democracy in the US and Britain."

The Center for African Studies at the University of Pittsburgh invites you to the next installment of the Wangari Maathai Lecture Series.

Ghirmai Negash, Samuel and Susan Crowl Professor of Literature at Ohio University, will present "Nervous Conditions of the Educated Class: A.J. Ahmed and African Intellectuals," examining the intellectual and psychological pressures shaping African scholarly and literary production.

Tuesday, October 20, 2026, 12 to 1:30 PM, 4130 Posvar Hall and Zoom.

Open to faculty, students, and the broader Pitt community.

Please register to receive the Zoom link.

The European Studies Center invites you to an open series with hybrid and asynchronous forms. The series takes participants from a shared research foundation in European policy to a finished policy brief published in the Interdisciplinary Review of ValEUs (IRV).

The series teaches the craft of writing for impact and how to transform complex political, economic, and cultural questions into clear, concise, and persuasive policy briefs that reach governmental, non-governmental, and international audiences.

Participants will learn to: 
Identify and define a policy problem with precision 
Conduct concise, evidence-based analysis grounded in real research 
Communicate complex issues in accessible, policy-oriented formats 
Develop practical, actionable recommendations for decision-makers.

Who Should Participate:
Faculty and researchers seeking to broaden their academic work
Humanities Scholars
Graduate and undergraduate students
Educators (Continued-Education Certificate)
Professionals interested in public policy, international affairs, transatlantic relations/European Studies.

No prior policy-writing experience is required.

Abstract:

Between 2019 and 2021, Colombia’s Paro Nacional (National Strike) established sound and music as central instruments of political protest. This lecture examines two significant instances of this phenomenon: the viral 2019 Cacerolazo Nacional, in which banging pots and pans spread across the country as a spontaneous form of dissent, and the 2021 Cacerolazos Sinfónicos, in which orchestral musicians brought their instruments into public demonstrations. Reading mediated sources, including videos, WhatsApp communications, press coverage, and human rights reports, as situated representations rather than transparent evidence of lived experience, this analysis develops a theoretical framework that extends Achille Mbembe's concept of necropolitics from lethal exposure to what might be termed aural governance. This framework, theorized here as a necropolitics of silence, accounts for how states render certain voices, communities, and experiences inaudible as a means of fragmenting and managing populations. In response to this imposed silence, citizens mobilized practices of noising and musicking to form ephemeral sonic communities that contested state-imposed inaudibility and briefly redistributed the sensible, reclaiming urban space for democratic claim-making. However, insofar as these practices functioned as political tactics rather than as elements of a broader strategy engaged with institutional politics, they also left the collectives and individuals involved vulnerable to both state repression and eventual absorption into institutional frameworks. This ambiguity, at once generative and self-limiting, offers a productive lens through which to examine the transformative potential and the political constraints of sound as a medium of resistance.

Juan Fernando Velasquez is an Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at the Moores School of Music, University of Houston. He studies how sound, technology, and social life intersect across Latin America, bridging musicology, ethnomusicology, cultural history, and sound studies, with additional interests in brass bands, protest music, and ecomusicology. His first book, Los Ecos de la Villa (2011), received a Grant for Research on Cultural Heritage from Medellín’s Secretary of Culture, and his articles have appeared in Latin American Music Review and Americas: A Hemispheric Music Journal. He is completing his second book, Inscribing Sounds, on music technology and culture in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Colombia, under contract with Oxford University Press. Velasquez earned his BA and MA from Universidad EAFIT and his PhD in Musicology, with certificates in Latin American and Cultural Studies, from the University of Pittsburgh. His honors include a Michigan Society of Fellows fellowship, a Mellon Predoctoral Fellowship, a Thinker grant, and a Fulbright grant.

Come and learn about undergraduate and graduate students about their global learning experiences abroad in the summer!

The Nationality Rooms and Intercultural Exchange Programs 2026 Scholarship Awardee Poster Showcase will be held on Thursday, October 22 from 5-6:30 pm in the Connolly Ballroom in Alumni Hall. Come join undergraduate and graduate students to learn about their global learning experiences abroad in the summer.

The NRIEP Scholarship Program is nearly sixty years old and supports study abroad, internships, independent research and experiential learning for Pitt students around the world.

4227 Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15260

2026 - 2027 Series
Re-Centering Narratives: Indigenous and Island Peoples

This professional development workshop series is designed for K-12 educators seeking to deepen their understanding of global issues through literature. This year, we will explore the theme of "Re-Centering Narratives: Indigenous and Island Peoples." Through global and regional perspectives, we will discuss narratives of Indigenous and Island Peoples, whose identities, spaces, and lived experiences are informed by global phenomena such as migration and displacement, economic and political struggles, environmental issues, human rights, and human conditions. By exploring compelling stories from diverse cultural perspectives, educators will gain insights into the complexities of this theme, its impact on individuals and communities, and how to engage students in meaningful discussions around these topics.

Each session features a carefully selected book, paired with historically contextualized presentations, interactive discussions, teaching strategies, and cross-disciplinary activities to inspire classroom implementation.

Sessions this year will take place virtually on Thursday evenings from 6:00-7:30 p.m. (ET). Three Act 48 credit hours (for PA educators) and a copy of the book are provided for each session.

George Hubbard Clapp, longtime Board Member of the University of Pittsburgh, supporter of the school through its transition to Oakland, was a Renaissance-man who endowed public collections with his wide-ranging interests in mollusk shells, coins, art, and the preservation of history. The commemorative lecture will highlight George Hubbard Clapp's many contributions to the liberal arts and sciences in Pittsburgh and reveal a man whose drive was one of abundant curiosity and support.

George Hubbard Clapp donated the Early American Room to the University of Pittsburgh in the late 1930’s. Mr. Hubbard Clapp also gave funding support to each of the Nationality and Heritage Rooms that were being constructed during that time period.

At 2:00 pm, Michael Walter, Manager of Education Programs for the Nationality Rooms and Intercultural Exchange Programs, will share details on the life and contributions of George Hubbard Clapp.

Following the lecture, representatives of the Pittsburgh Chapter of the Pennsylvania Society Sons of the American Revolution will recognize George Hubbard Clapp posthumously with the PSSAR Silver Good Citizenship Award as a recognition of his outstanding and unusual patriotic achievement and service to the Pittsburgh region.

Private, small group tours will be led in the Early American Room during the Q&A section of the lecture.

A reception will be held in the Croghan Schenley Room on the Cathedral of Learning First Floor from 3:30-4:30 pm.
The co-sponsors are: Sons of the American Revolution, PA Chapter; Sons of the American Revolution; Daughters of the American Revolution ; and the Nationality Society of the Colonial Dames of America – The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

In collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh's student-led ModelUN Club, the University Center for International Studies annually convenes a high school Model UN. This simulation of the sessions of the United Nations provides an opportunity for high school students to apply their studies to real-world contexts and practice diplomacy, negotiating, and resolution writing.

Tuesday, October 27th English Room, CL 144 5:30 pm
Reception Croghan Schenley Room, CL 156 6:30 pm

Legacy of Hungarians in the United States: People, Places, Pathways is an interdisciplinary heritage initiative developed in connection with the 250th anniversary of the United States. It brings together historians, ethnographers, archivists, cultural institutions, and community partners from Hungary and the United States to present more than two centuries of Hungarian migration and life in America. The project approaches this history from three perspectives: migration periods and journeys, important locations in Hungarian-American history, and personal and family stories. Alongside the traveling exhibition, a bilingual online exhibition provides an expanding resource for education, research, and community use.
The exhibition will be introduced by a short video following which a walkthrough will be led by Balázs Balogh, the Director General of the ELTE Research Centre for the Humanities and the Director of the Institute of Ethnology, Budapest.

A reception will be held after the exhibition walkthrough in the Croghan Schenley Ballroom CL156. Guests can also view a 2015 Hungarian ethnographic documentary titled “Boarding House” or in Hungarian "Burdosház Amerikából," narrated by Dr. Balogh and which shares the story of a Hungarian mining settlement in Vintondale, Pennsylvania. Tours of the Hungarian Room CL 121 will be available starting at 6:30 pm.

Educational programming representatives of Rivers of Steel will be available throughout the event to provide information and resources on the southwestern Pennsylvania’s industrial and cultural heritage. Guests in attendance will have special access to a discounted tour of the Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area.

Daniel Pennell, Curator for Slavic, European, and Eurasian Studies at the Archives & Special Collections in the University of Pittsburgh’s Library System, will share information about the accompanying exhibition on Hungarians in the Pittsburgh region that he curated and is on display at the Global Hub in Posvar Hall. An additional display in the Global Hub will feature items from the collections of the Nationality Rooms and Intercultural Exchange Programs, planned by Michael Walter, Manager of Education Programs.

Sponsored by REEES, Archives & Special Collections, University of Pittsburgh Library System.

Restored Version of the 1948 film, often described as the "Mother of all Holocaust Films." Director Wanda Jakubowska survived Auschwitz. She set and filmed the movie in Auschwitz and used survivors and locals in the casting.
This film influenced a generation of filmmakers but then was forgotten and surviving negatives began to decay.
This restoration from 2020 makes the film available for new generations. The pandemic limited its distribution but now we are welcoming you to join us in the Pittsburgh premier.