I was lucky to be able to attend the Peace and Justice Studies Association Annual Conference at Tufts University in October, 2012.  Many of the sessions I attended were relevant to my coursework and extracurricular activities, but a few in particular stood out.  One was called “Living Our Way Into the Answers: A Workshop on Transformative Pedagogy.”  The workshop had about thirty participants, and ended up being split relatively evenly between students and professors.  Much of the conversation, therefore, ended up being a dialogue about what transformative pedagogy means for students versus the perspective that educators have.  Many professors talked about how difficult it can be to introduce radical pedagogy in a system obsessed with learning objectives and outcomes, and how emotionally drained they felt – like they just didn’t have the energy to be “transformative” anymore.  It became clear throughout the workshop that many people feel that dialogue-based classrooms have the potential to affect attitudes toward peace on a societal level, but still struggled on how to implement such pedagogy.

Throughout college, I chose all of my courses for one of three reasons: I need to take them for a requirement, the topic looks interesting, or the topic is something that I am already very interested in.  “Politics of Population” fell into the latter category for me. I was already fascinated by population policy within the context of public health, and was excited to further explore the subject by also looking at it from the perspective of environmental concerns and economics.  The class raised many questions that linger every time I deal with issues of reproductive health and justice within work, volunteer, or academic settings.  Is it ever ok to exert pressure on a woman, even if it is in the name of peace or democracy?  Can social justice sometimes be used as a mask to cover much more pernicious motives?  When is it ok for countries from the Global North to dictate policy in the Global South – or is it always a form of neocolonialism?

I don’t think of myself as somebody interested in advertising, but as I reflect on my growing fascination with health education, I realize that that is what it really is: lots of big and small advertising campaigns.  People don’t just decide to use condoms, for instance, because someone tells them it will protect them from disease.  They respond to marketing and campaigns that make them feel cool or manly or robust using condoms.  You can see the same with messages telling people to quit smoking, use clean needles, or eat more vegetables.  Much of public health work is a science, but health education is often an art.  I think back, for instance, to the many health messaging campaigns I saw in Indonesia trying to tackle false health information, with the intent of influencing safer behavior.  The poster below, for instance, explains that you cannot get HIV from choosing sex partners on the basis of their appearance; drinking or injecting antibiotics, alcohol, or herbal medicine before and after having sex; or washing one’s sex organs after having sex.

My study abroad program had a very unique set-up, where an intensive period of traditional academic courses, was followed by a two month independent research project.   This was a big part of why I chose that particular program over others: I was thrilled at the chance to do research on a topic entirely of my choosing, and with a design of my own shaping.  My initial hope was to focus my research on a public maternal and child healthcare program in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, but even the best laid plans go astray.  Shortly before I was supposed to begin my research, Mt. Merapi erupted, leading to dozens of deaths, the destruction of many villages, and mass evacuation from the city.  Instead, I ended up researching a new provincial universal healthcare program in Bali, called Jaminan Kesehatan Bali Mandara (JKBM).

When I went to Indonesia for the first time with Haverford’s CPGC, I took a six-week research methodology seminar before being able to sink my teeth into actual unsupervised “real” research.  The course included a revolving door of Indonesian, Australian, and American guest speakers who spoke about everything from journalistic research methods to quantitative surveys.  One of the most inspiring of these speakers talked about participatory action research, or PAR, and the ways in which it is able to simultaneously bring together community participation, action, and research throughout an investigation.  Michelle Fine defines PAR as “an epistemology that assumes knowledge is rooted in social relations and most powerful when produced collaboratively through action.”  Since doing research projects in high school, I’ve thought of social research as more than a tool for acquiring information, but also as a modality to bring about change.  Throughout the seminar, all of the students on the trip had to partner up and carry out a “mini” research project to test drive the methodologies we had been learning.

One of the most interesting and important aspects of spending such a long time in Indonesia was forming close friendships with many people my age who I never would have met otherwise.  It always surprise me when people hear about me living in Indonesia, or see pictures from my time there, and make comments about how I must have done such good, important, helpful work with the people I met.  This couldn’t be further from the truth: although I felt like my friendships were for the most part egalitarian, I did receive considerable support from my friends, both in terms making it financially feasible to take time off and live in Indonesia, and in the ways they became important emotional supports.  Many of the people I got to know were part of an informal art community called “Komunitas Pojok,” or “The Community on the Corner.” 

I have never felt the strength of the Bryn Mawr alumnae network  as acutely as I felt it while doing an internships at the California EPA with a Bryn Mawr alumna, a biologist working at the Air Resources Board (ARB).  As somebody interested in public health, I saw many obvious links to topics I had already been interested in, like increased rates of childhood asthma in urban areas. The ARB is in charge of air pollution generally, so they do focus on issues like asthma, but they are the only division officially working to reduce California’s greenhouse gas emissions, and thus do a lot of research on climate change. I already cared about climate change, but had little academic background or understanding, so it felt a little bit like I was being thrust into a new world.  I ended up working on the “State Implementation Plan” on regional haze for the federal EPA, and learned more about the science and politics of haze than I ever imagined.

Before moving to West Philly about a year and a half ago, I had never planted, weeded, or harvested anything.  It seems somewhat ironic that my move from a suburban campus with lots of fields perfect for gardening to an urban neighborhood with little green space would precipitate my interest in gardening.  But, in actuality, my neighborhood is home to many small community gardens.  Right near my house, for instance, is a community garden that works with the elementary school across the street, so kids can both have fun working in the garden and learn about different plants at the same time.  My neighborhood is also home to some of the gardens affiliated with the “Philly Food Forests” movement, a group of rogue gardeners who find vacant lots around the city and transform them into gardens that provide fresh produce and herbs for surrounding communities.

As part of my 360 I had the opportunity to participate in a seven week art workshop with women in a Philadelphia prison.  The experience was so recent that it is hard to step back and figure what it actually meant for both me and my classmates to be doing art together in that space.  I went into the class thinking that it would be an exercise in shared learning about tough political and social issues like systemic racism, racialized incarceration, and the school-to-prison pipeline. I’ve long been interested in restorative justice, particularly in relation to my work in the HIV field, and the course seemed to tie in perfectly with some of my other academic interests.  I was also excited because I saw the class as an opportunity to share some of the ideas I have learned in a privileged college setting with people who might not otherwise have access.