Five John Jay College International Criminal Justice majors traveled to Washington, D.C. during the spring semester to present posters from their Diplomacy Lab projects at the Diplomacy Lab Fair held at the U.S. Department of State.
The students included seniors Bassel Ahmad, Christos Almeida and Gabriella Mungalsingh and recent graduates Armando Barbosa and Megan Kane. They were accompanied by Professor Rosemary Barberet of the Department of Sociology who organized the trip and is the current Diplomacy Lab Coordinator at John Jay. Funding for the trip was provided by a grant from the College’s Office for the Advancement of Research.
Diplomacy Lab is a public-private partnership that enables the Department of State to “course-source” research and innovation related to foreign policy challenges by harnessing the efforts and knowledge of students and faculty experts at colleges and universities across the country. John Jay College of Criminal Justice was one of 11 Diplomacy Lab university delegations to showcase their work at an all-day Diplomacy Lab project fair, which also included informational panels about careers at the Department of State and networking opportunities.
The students were representing their teams of classmates from their fall capstone seminar class in international criminal justice. The class had worked on one project for the Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL), exploring the use of social media by criminal justice organizations in post-conflict and post-transition countries, including Nigeria, Colombia, Pakistan, Palestine, Egypt, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and El Salvador. INL was interested in the extent to which social media use by criminal justice organizations (law enforcement, judiciary, corrections, etc.) can increase transparency, accountability and legitimacy. As is the case with Diplomacy Lab projects, the class was assigned liaisons from the Department of State who gave feedback throughout the semester. This project benefited from the liaison expertise of John Jay doctoral student Leonid Lantsman, currently an outreach officer at INL, and Tracie Davis, also an outreach officer.
Barberet notes that Diplomacy Lab serves a dual function for the College – to provide students with an applied research experience as well as to put their research to possible use by funneling the results to officials at the Department of State. John Jay undergraduate and graduate students have been participating in Diplomacy Lab for two years so far. Next fall, Professors George Andreopoulos, Jana Arsovska, Gohar Petrossian and Barberet will lead student teams in Diplomacy Lab projects. Faculty interested in participating in spring 2017 projects should contact Professor Barberet at rbarberet@jjay.cuny.edu.
