Master of Arts in Global Communications and Civil Society: Curriculum

  Conflict Negotiation Simulation

  Conflict Simulation and Prevention

  Conflict Resolution in the Pacific Region

  Activism in the Backyard: The Prisoner of War

  Civic Media

  Financial NGO Management

  HIV/AIDS Program Design and Implementation in Africa

  Philanthropy

  Policy and Politics of Oil and Gas Markets

  Prevention of Human Trafficking

  Microfinance and Development

Politics is a matter of negotiation. Who gets what? And how much? The aim is to unite conflicting interests and to reach decisions concerning the distribution of money, power, security, autonomy etc. Usually, negotiations consist of tough and lengthy wrangling about what appear to be small steps of progress and minor compromises. Outside observers often find it difficult to understand why negotiations or attempts to settle conflicts succeed or fail. Which concessions have made an agreement possible or which demands have prevented it? Which strategic considerations are the actors led by? What scope are they given within institutional, domestic and other constraints? Which negotiation strategies are successful?

Simulating conflicts and negotiations provides a playful way of learning and understanding the political dynamics behind them. This is the exact goal of simulation games. After a negotiation or conflict situation has been chosen, the participants of the game proceed to assume the roles of the different parties and agents relevant to that situation. They have to represent their "character's" interests convincingly and aim to make them prevail in negotiations. In order to achieve this, they must determine any existing scope for negotiation, use it to their advantage and recognize situations which call for compromise.

  Instructors: Simon Raiser and Bjorn Warkalla

After a brief review of theory of conflict resolution, students will be asked to respond, working in teams, to a brief presenting a real-life conflict situation. Students will be responsible for researching the various histories of the conflict (political, ethnic, religious, etc.), considering the specific issues at stake (human rights, frontiers, ethnic autonomy), as well as designing solutions for managing and settling the conflict. Long-term plans for reconciliation and sustainable peace-making will be included.

  Instructor: Adamou Kombo

Through a three-day intensive workshop, this module focuses on practical approaches to conflict resolution and working across cultures, with a particular emphasis on the Asia Pacific. While the emphasis is on working across cultural difference, participants will deepen their understanding of working with conflict more generally. Approaches to conflict resolution will be socially and culturally contextualised and placed within a spectrum of conflict prevention, conflict resolution/ transformation and peacebuilding. While some conflicts in the Asia Pacific region are mediable, others are not and require different kinds of short, medium and long term approaches. The module will introduce students to practical skills for conflict mapping and analysis, negotiation and mediation, communication and observation, dialogue in peacebuilding, and working with difference and division. Non-Western approaches to conflict resolution will also be discussed. The workshop includes presentations, interactive discussions and experiential role play simulations addressing different areas of conflict. Role plays will be drawn from examples of conflicts in international politics, commerce or development in East Asia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific Island region.

  Instructor: Anne Brown

The laws and customs governing the prisoner of war had been one of the most stable and consensual areas of international affairs, evolving under the general principles of inclusion, protection, and de-criminalization systematically set out in the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions. The launching of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) by the United States and its allies in 2001 dramatically altered this development with troubling immediate and long term consequences. The workshop module will explore the impact of the GWOT on the prisoner of war and raise larger questions about the relationship between security, criminalization, and imprisonment. The workshop module includes an action research component focused on problem diagnosis and solution.

Module requirements include: attendance, participation in a group project, and the submission of the group project presentation. Grade will be determined by participation in the module and the quality of the group project presentation.

  Instructor: Avery Gordon

Over the last several years, the Internet has exploded with sites that draw on the visual arts to tell stories of people’s lives that have too often gone unheard. Technological advances have made photographic and movie cameras relatively inexpensive so that everyone can literally document his or her own life. Stories are no longer being told only by “outsiders” – those photojournalists and photographers who visit remote regions and leave when their work is done. Today, “insiders” can tell their own stories using disposable and Flip cameras, and their work is adding a new dimension to our understanding of their lives. These participatory photography projects are changing the way we see the world, giving voices to people who previously had to depend on others to tell their stories. And the Internet has become the vehicle of choice to send these images out to the world. How these images affect us, how they can change our views, and those of policymakers, is the key question for this three-day module as we explore how new media technology can be used in innovative ways to promote social change. We will examine a number of projects that have “mashed up” traditional storytelling techniques with new media to form hybrids that have the potential to change people’s lives. You will analyze how familiar storytelling approaches like photography, filmmaking, music, oral history, and reporting are now being combined with cutting-edge media like blogs, websites, mobile phones, twitter, video games, and cell phone apps to extend the ways in which we can reach out across the world to one another.

  Instructor: Neal Baer

This module will provide an overview of NGO management and administration with special emphasis on financial management in the broader context of organizational management and international development. Students will create plans for a virtual NGO, identifying first a geographical area and a thematic issue to address, and then creating a blueprint for mission, fundraising plans, personnel structure, grassroots organization, international networking, and media and communication.

  Instructor: John Cammack

This module aims to explore the many complex factors that contribute to the spread and impact of HIV/AIDS in the developing world. Through lectures, readings and group assignments, students will become familiar with the basic medical, social, economic and political implications of HIV/AIDS in Africa. In addition to HIV-specific topics, this module will include a strong component on the process of designing and presenting a medium to large-scale HIV/AIDS program for donor funding. By the end of this module, students will be able to interpret and evaluate HIV/AIDS-focused Requests for Applications/Proposals (RFAs/RFPs), they will be able to develop new HIV/AIDS prevention/care/support programs in Africa and they will be able to articulate HIV/AIDS program design though a project proposal.

  Instructor: Sean Casey

Most people think of society as made up of two sectors, a public sector or government and a for-profit sector or business. Yet in all societies, whether democratic or authoritarian, whether developed, developing or transitional, there is a cluster of institutions that are neither public nor for-profit. It is only in the last 40 years that we have begun to think of these institutions as a third sector. At first we described them by what they were not: non-government or not-for-profit institutions. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the term most often employed to describe the sector these institutions belong to is civil society. The institutions of civil society at times collaborate with the institutions of the other two sectors and at times place themselves in an adversarial position regarding the other two sectors. Philanthropy, both individual and organized, works through the institutions of civil society and resources a significant portion of their revenues. But in addition to their instrumental role of providing services, these institutions play a generic role as a Fifth Estate making it more difficult to concentrate and abuse power. This course will review the scope and activities of civil society and philanthropy in a global context. It will delineate what the elements of an enabling environment for civil society and philanthropy are and where the threats to it exist. The course will concentrate on the philanthropic slice of civil society, individual, organized and corporate. It will explore some of the most important issues facing philanthropy today. Finally, it will ask whether philanthropy is facing the big issues of our time, such as climate change and conflict resolution. Given its tax and/or other advantages, does philanthropy deliver on its promises and earn its keep? This course will provide an opportunity to take an insider‟s look at the issues raised above with a group of experienced civil society practitioners. It also provides an introduction to major publications, websites, tools and other resources available and used by the sector.

  Instructor: Barry Gaberman

This module will give students an in-depth understanding of the hydrocarbon energy policies in major producing and consuming countries. All relevant concepts (fundamentals, cartel, spare capacity, etc.), the role of major players (international oil companies, national oil companies, etc.) and the trading mechanisms will be duly explained. The design of an appropriate oil & gas market is a difficult task that hasn’t been completely achieved in a satisfactory way anywhere. To understand the difficulty in designing a perfect energy market, the course will deal with the specificity of strategic commodities and will assess the market power of national oil companies. As Energy Policy is a on going process part of the course will address the Liberalization and Environmental questions in consuming countries as well as the revival of resources nationalism in producing countries.

  Instructor: Thierry Bros

  This module investigates trafficking; migration (both safe and unsafe); drugs and illicit economies in the GMS, and will exam these issues with regard to:

• Myths and facts of trafficking

• The linked set of issues which come together with trafficking and migration; namely, HIV and AIDS and non-traditional drug use

• The people and cultures of the GMS: Who are they? What are their vulnerabilities?

• Using culture to find solutions, and why does culture still matter in today’s globalized world? It will specifically investigate: Prostitution as a cultural system; Cultural Factors in the transmission of HIV.

  Instructors: David Feingold and Heather Peters

Microfinance has emerged as one of the most promising tools for reducing poverty and creating new opportunities in low-income communities. The 2006 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank pays tribute to vision of creating globally-inclusive financial access. This course will explore the strategic role of financial access in international development and global poverty reduction. The course sets the context by describing the history and evolution of the field, from both theoretical and practical perspectives. A comparative analysis in microfinance will comprise the second part of the course. The course concludes with consideration of commercial microfinance and the roles for governments, donors, and NGOs in engaging in the public and private spheres.

This module is taught by a team of experts from PlaNet Finance.

PlaNet Finance is an international non-governmental organization (NGO) that aims to alleviate poverty worldwide through the development of microfinance. PlaNet Finance is an international organisation whose mission is to fight against poverty through the development of microfinance. As the microfinance expert, PlaNet Finance offers a set of services via eight independent and specialised units whose primary objective is to develop an inclusive financial sector.