Laura Courchesne, University of Georgia Honors College ‘17

While the CHGS played only a minor part in Laura Courchesne’s amazing success, she was an ideal choice as the first CHGS intern at the US Army War College.  In her summer in Carlisle, PA, she worked with the Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute to research Nigeria and Boko Haram.  Her research was integrated into a Nigeria and Boko Haram Situation Assessment, to which Cadet Samuel Jones ‘18 also contributed and Dr. Frey re-wrote and expanded.  Like the South Sudan Situation Assessment, the Nigeria document was used by Dr. Frey in XH 415 “Genocide and Mass Killing” for the course concluding table top exercise and is now in use by US Army Africa.

Ms. Courchesne, who is currently pursuing an M.Phil. in International Relations and Affairs at Oxford, is also collaborating with the Oxford Changing Character of War Programme (CCW), a program devoted to the interdisciplinary study of war and armed conflict at Pembroke College.  In addition, she works as a research analyst for the Advisor on the Sociology of Non-State Armed Groups for the ICRC.  Her long-term goals include conflict mediation, interacting with actors involved in conflicts and helping countries work together to eliminate the threat of non-state armed groups. She hopes to build a generalizable behavioral models that predict escalations of violence and conflict dynamics on the basis of organizational attributes.