Past Events

A forum for existing, new, and interested GSC students to learn about new resources and programs, exchange information about classes, internships, student clubs, and give input on what you’d like to see from the Global Studies Center in the future. We will incorporate sessions with alumni to get their insights, representatives from student clubs, and faculty who teach courses for our certificates, among others.
Virtual sessions will focus on each of the Global Studies certificate concentrations, and students are welcome to join as many as they like.
Contact Elaine if you represent a student organization that would like to speak at one of these sessions or has any questions.

This webinar focuses on migration, policing, and political movements, particularly involving the experiences of Afro-Brazilians, Afro-Mexicans, and U.S.-based Afro-Latinxs. Scholars working at the intersections of Africana, Latinx, and Latin American studies will explore the ways that these issues overlap and impact Afro-Latin Americans and their diasporic communities in the U.S.
The event is sponsored by the Global Studies Center, in collaboration with Hispanic Heritage Month and the Afro-Latin American and Afro-Latinx Studies Initiative (Department of Africana Studies) at the University of Pittsburgh. Featured panelists include: Dr. Eddie Bonilla, UCIS Postdoctoral Fellow in Latinx Studies at the University of Pittsburgh; Dr. Jennifer Jones of the University of Illinois at Chicago; Dr. Zachary Morgan of Penn State University; and Dr. Keisha-Khan Y. Perry of Brown University.

Water Infrastructure and Regional Governance, September 29 - October 2, 2020
The Regional Studies Association’s Research Network on Infrastructural Regionalism (NOIR) is convening three online (Zoom) workshops to showcase empirical and conceptual research at the intersection of water governance, infrastructure, and regionalism. Water infrastructure performs a vital role in making and remaking regions. Watersheds and reservoirs, pipelines and ports, and storm water management and climate change mitigation represent complex political, economic, and environmental challenges. They are essential, if often black-boxed infrastructures that define how regional space is constructed, territorialized, and experienced. As critical urban infrastructures and contested political objects, water systems are fundamental to conversations about sustainability and economic development trajectories for communities across the global South and global North.
We are now accepting registrations for the NOIR Workshops on Water Infrastructure and Regional Governance. This event will assess how water infrastructure shapes formal and informal regional spaces, communities, and governance dynamics and explores how these shape how water infrastructure is developed. We are hosting four public panels that present research on what water infrastructure reveals about the politics and governance of metropolitan regions.
REGISTER: https://pitt.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_7amhh1MQpKV09Eh
TUESDAY, September 29 | 11am - 1pm ET
Water Infrastructure and Regional Governance in and beyond Western Pennsylvania
11 - 11:10am | University of Pittsburgh/CONNECT Welcome
CONNECT Executive Director Lydia Morin
11:10 - 11:20am | Regional Studies Association Welcome, Keynote Introductions
Michael Glass, University of Pittsburgh
11:20 - 11:50am | Keynote 1: Infrastructures of Inequality
Leila Harris, University of British Columbia
11:50am - 12:20pm | Keynote 2: Thinking Regionally, Acting Strategically: New Approaches to Governing Regional Water Infrastructures
Andy Karvonen, KTH Royal Institute of Technology
12:20 - 12:35pm | Discussant Response
Dan Bain, Pittsburgh Water Collaboratory
12:35pm - 1pm | Moderated Audience Q&A
WEDNESDAY, September 30 | 11am - 12pm ET
RESEARCH PANEL 1: Decision-Making and Engagement in Water Governance
MODERATOR: Jen Nelles; Q&A: JP Addie
Regional infrastructures are often taken for granted by the public, with the consequence that infrastructural management and planning is surrendered to experts and institutions that may not be representative of the region overall. By tracing the lines of authority and influence that shape city-region infrastructures, we hope to reveal opportunities for greater engagement of more diverse publics in the deliberations over infrastructural futures.
Anne Taufen, Lisa Hoffman, Ken Yocom (University of Washington-Tacoma): Unveiling Infrastructures
Ramazan Sayan & Nidhi Nagabhatla (UN University Institute for Water, Environment, and Health): An Infrastructure Turn in Water Sharing
Fenna Hoefsloot, Javier Martinez, & Karin Pfeffer (University of Twente): Speculative futures of Lima’s water infrastructure
Cat Button (University of Newcastle): Governing Water Infrastructure from our Homes
THURSDAY, October 1 | 1am - 12pm ET
RESEARCH PANEL 2: Regional Partnerships Under Threat
MODERATOR: Michael Glass; Q&A: Jen Nelles
Whereas regional infrastructures such as sewer lines, water treatment plants, and water transportation technologies (namely locks and dams) were constructed as part of earlier periods of urban and regional development, shifting patterns of demand threaten to diminish the utility of these assets. We need to ascertain how such changing dynamics are influencing (and being influenced by) the existing governance of those infrastructural networks.
Andrew Dick & Sara Hughes (University of Michigan): The Multi-City Growth Machine in Regional Governance Networks—the case of the Karegnondi Water Authority
Dayne Walling (University of Minnesota): Urban Geographies of Fragmentation and Distress: Government Planning, Development, Infrastructure, and Inequality around Deindustrialized US Cities
Sachin Tiwale (Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai): Grabbing Water Resources in Urban Agglomeration—The Case of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR)
Grete Gansauer & Julia Haggerty (Montana State University): Regionalizing the Rural through Large-Scale water Infrastructure
Karsten Zimmerman (TU Dortmund): Infrastructure Regionalism as Driver for Metropolitan Governance? The Case of the Ruhr Region in Germany
FRIDAY, October 2 | 11am - 12pm ET
RESEARCH PANEL 3: Emerging Complexities in Regional Water Governance
MODERATOR: JP Addie; Q&A Michael Glass
Health crises, Federal mandates, technological innovation, and exogenous shocks can all disrupt formal and informal governance structures. We seek empirical examples and theoretical advances that can help to conceptualize how city-regions across the Global North and Global South are affected by these complexities, and to seek out best practices whereby specific regions are confronting these complexities.
Mark Usher (University of Manchester): Hydraulic Territory: Internal colonization through urban catchment management in Singapore
Filippo Menga & Michael K. Goodman (University of Reading): The Good Samaritan: Capitalism, Religion and the Political Economy of Care in International Water Charity
Mike Finewood (Pace University), Marissa Matsler, Olivia Pierce, Zenya Lederman, & Ruthann Richards: What does it mean to empower communities? Green infrastructure incentive programs as a form of neoliberal governance
Scott Raulerson, Richard Milligan, & Ellis Adams (Georgia State University): Urban Water and Hydrosocial Inequalities

The HT94 Pitt team, along with the Global Studies Center and the Pitt Global Hub present a free screening of "Border South" (available in both Spanish and English) for 24 hours on September 24-25 (4PM ET-4PM ET).
Film Synopsis: To stem the immigration tide, Mexico and the U.S. collaborate to crack down on migrants, forcing them into ever more dangerous territory. Every year hundreds of thousands of migrants make their way along the trail running from southern Mexico to the US border. Gustavo’s gunshot wounds from Mexican police, which have achieved abundant press attention, might just earn him a ticket out of Nicaragua. Meanwhile anthropologist Jason painstakingly collects the trail’s remains, which have their own stories to tell. Fragmented stories from Hondurans crossing through southern Mexico assemble a vivid portrait of the thousands of immigrants who disappear along the trail. Border South reveals the immigrants’ resilience, ingenuity, and humor as it exposes a global migration system that renders human beings invisible in life as well as death.
After the screening, please join us for a Q&A with the Director Raúl O. Paz Pastrana and Producer Jason De León on September 25th at 5PMET, and a debrief with the HT94 Pitt team at 7PMET.
By registering, you will receive info on how to access the screening and further instructions on joining the Q&A and debrief.
Register here: https://pitt.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3t6jGMUK97oleiF

Panelists:
Mohammed Bamyeh, Sociology
Diego Holstein, History
Lina Insana, French and Italian
Dijana Mujkanovic, GSPIA (Ph.D. candidate)

The University Center for International Studies now offers a Certificate in Mediterranean Studies at both the undergraduate and the graduate level. A certificate in Mediterranean studies provides Pitt students and faculty with the institutional support and organizational structure to examine issues and themes across the Mediterranean world over a broad chronological span – from Antiquity to the present. The interdisciplinary certificates offered by the European Studies Center contextualize the ideas of Mediterranean cultures past and present and examine the influence of those ideas outside of the region.
Please join us for a lecture by Dr. Emmanuel Rota, University of Illinois, on “Race and Racism in the Early Modern Period in the Mediterranean Region.”
We encourage our audience to participate in the Q&A discussion following the lecture.
A GrubHub credit will be available (with limited quantities). Please register to receive directions how to receive your credit and set up your delivery.