This June, the first cohort of students will graduate from both the MA in Women’s and Gender Studies (WGST) and the new collaborative master’s program in African Studies.
Two students are graduating from the African Studies collaborative program while three students are graduating from the WGST program.
Zoë Gross has won a University Medal (Master’s Level) for her outstanding graduate work. She conducted her research for the WGST in East Africa. “Every day I met incredible people who just wanted to sit down, discuss ideas, and share their personal experiences and viewpoints, which was so refreshing. Conducting primary research overseas was incredibly challenging, but it was equally fulfilling and meaningful, especially when i was able to make links to, and sometimes question, the theory I was learning in the classroom at Carleton.” Gross will be pursuing her PhD in Women’s & Gender Studies at the University of Toronto beginning September 2013.
As part of her WGST degree, Kathleen Kuracina built a strong connection with a Women’s Studies department in India, where she completed the final year of her graduate program. Says Kuracina: “My experiences in India have been invaluable and have helped shape my research paper and professional aspirations immensely. This has also created an exciting opportunity for future academic exchanges amongst students interested in gender and development transnationally.” Kuracina has been working with one of her supervisors on a research project exploring the existing research of violence against women in South Asia and mapping laws and policies as they relate to this issue. She has now been hired to work for the United Nations Association in Canada (UNAC) on a six-month position in Colombia with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on a Gender Equity and Peacebuilding project. Her position is Junior Professional Consultant for projects on gender and development and the campaign on violence against women and girls.
Courtney Constable says the WGST program allows “students to study a topic that means something to them or that they’ve always been interested in, but to look at the issue from a specifically feminist perspective, allowing them to perhaps discover new angles of their information and learn how necessary feminist study is in all aspects of our society. Because the program is still very new, it also allows new students to sort of “blaze the trail” in terms of projects that have come out of this program.”
All three WGST students will officially graduate at the afternoon ceremony on June 14.
Carleton’s African Studies program builds on Carleton’s grad school reputation as it is the first of its kind in Canada; is interdisciplinary (drawing on expertise from three different faculties and bringing together grad students from 14 different master’s programs); expands Carleton’s focus on globalization and fosters community engagements. A placement course enables students to work in the Ottawa-Gatineau community and in Africa itself.
