Alexandra Schaerrer-Cumming, S-CAR PhD Student

Alexandra Schaerrer- Cumming grew up in Switzerland during the height of the atrocities and genocide that have come to be associated with the former Yugoslavia con­flict. “I became friends with a young girl who had managed to escape the carnage that was taking place in her country and the way she described the horrors and terror of war made me re-evaluate the direction I wanted my life to take.” From that period, Alexandra developed a keen interest in learning about repres­sion, ethnocentrism, and intolerance in her own country as well as abroad. Alexandra’s journey into the field of conflict analysis and resolution started while she was getting her BA in Political Science and German Literature at Washington & Lee University. While there, issues of her identity were con­stantly coming up amongst her friends. “Although I was born and raised in Switzerland, my mother is Maltese. The Swiss consider me to be Maltese and the Maltese consider me to be Swiss.” This lack of a clear identity made her friends refer to her simply as “the European” and as this was getting rather confus­ing: “I labeled myself as an international citizen.” Although she enjoyed her time at her undergraduate school she felt her education was missing a practical component that she des­perately wanted to have. Alexandra's passion for linking theory to practice in the field of conflict analysis and resolution eventually led her to work with grassroots organizations in Tanzania and Mozambique after she com­pleted her Masters degree in Comparative and International Studies from the Swiss Polytechnic Institute of Zurich (ETH). While working in East Africa, Alexandra had the opportunity to experience firsthand some of the region's pressing issues such as poverty, a lack of education, lack of job opportunities, corruption, security concerns, tribal violence, HIV/AIDS, and many more. As she said, “This experience provided me with the emo­tional and intellectual growth allowing me to garner a better understanding between the role of economic, social, and polit­ical factors on the outbreak of conflict, security dilemmas, and competition for scarce resource allocation.” After three years of working on the African continent, Alexandra was ready to be in the classroom again, this time to focus her academic work on research that could positively influence policy that would complement all grassroots efforts in conflict resolution.After being accepted into and successfully completing a double Masters in Mediterranean Security Studies via the University of Malta and Conflict Analysis and Resolution from S-CAR, she was keen to pursue the PhD program at S-CAR, as she felt she still had a lot to learn. “I was as such very excited to be accepted as part of the 2013 PhD cohort and I look forward to this new challenge in my life.

Reprinted - http://newsdesk.gmu.edu/2014/08/making-better-world-student-learns-link-...