Dayna Osafo, Aliyah Starks, and Seth Wickens-Walther, three UIUC undergraduates who studied French with us, are currently holding internships in Paris. Thanks to the cooperation between LAS International Programs and Studies and IFE (Institute for Field Education), a European not-for-profit institution that aims at enhancing trans-Atlantic understanding through exploration of European perspectives, these students are putting their knowledge of French to good use this semester.
Dayna Osafo is interning at a major European think tank in Paris thanks to cooperation with the Robert Schuman Foundation. Her weekly duties consist of writing news briefs on topics related to international organizations and member States of the European Union. Specifically, she covers Malta, Cyprus, and Ireland. Additionally, she is tasked with updating the foundation’s country fact sheets for each of these countries. Dayna also writes briefing notes on current European affairs, including the European Court of Human Rights and Ukraine’s foreign policy. She started working on the latter subject when a Ukrainian delegation visited the Robert Schumann Foundation in Paris in October. Additionally, Dayna regularly reports on academic and political events in Paris related to Europe. As part of her research topic, Dayna aims to merge her interests in international relations and the environment within the framework of Global Gateway, a worldwide strategy by the European Union to invest in infrastructure projects and establish economic partnerships, based on sustainability.
Aliyah Starks' internship took her to Institute for Climate Economics. She is interning at this sustainable development think tank that specializes in economics. Her project focuses on the impact and usage of carbon pricing in different European pricing systems. From the beginning of her internship, Aliyah was immersed in the subject matter, as she participated in a workshop hosted by her employer for representatives from different European countries. She wrote a summary of the workshop. She is now primarily working on collecting and analyzing a database of the 17 identified carbon pricing systems. Afterwards, she will assist another researcher at the Centre with a project on the strategies of various European countries concerning green transition, with a comparative focus on France. As for her dissertation topic, Aliyah will explore the implementation of carbon pricing from an international perspective, addressing its impact on consumers.
Seth Wickens-Walther assists two graduate students with their current research at the Laboratory of Formal Linguistics (LLF - University of Paris). The first involves the analysis of bilingualism within a French-Chinese bilingual population. To this end, Seth helps transcribe interviews with respondents using PRAAT software. He will then assist this colleague with some eye recognition work. The second project concerns the question of the redundant adjective, with a comparison between the Chinese and French languages. After that, Seth will be asked to work on occasional tasks for members of the lab. He also has the opportunity to participate in seminars, colloquia, and other events. In his research project, Seth would like to apply what he had learned through this project by conducting his own study between an English-speaking American population and a French-speaking population, and possibly take it to an upcoming conference in the United States.
Congratulations on your high-profile internships, Dayna, Aliyah, and Seth!