Dr. Seymour, you are the face of the ARPs. I am interested to know a bit about the history of your involvement. Specifically, what attracted you to the Applied Research Projects (ARPs) and the position?
I first joined the applied research adventure in 2018, when the projects were still called ‘Capstones’. At that time, I was still mostly researching and giving policy advice to the UN and other NGOs. I remember perfectly the moment my involvement began: I had just landed at the Geneva airport from a final workshop in Amman (where I had just closed out a research consultancy, and was generally questioning the value of my work–was that just another report that would not actually make a difference in anyone’s life?) when my phone rang. It was Professor Achim Wennmann calling to probe my interest in joining him in supervising the Global Security applied research projects. The opportunity to share my learning about international engagement was a gift that came at exactly the right time. Ever since, the work has been about transmitting to future policy-makers and practitioners the importance of rigour, honesty and humility, and of staying close to the values of international cooperation and service.
Working with partner organisations involves a lot of external engagement and outlook. How do you seek out sponsors and individuals who embody the Institute and MINT programme spirit for students?
While it used to be me calling on old friends to sponsor projects for our students, now applications to become an ARP partner are very competitive. Each year, we receive applications from aspiring partners from across the world. This is notably thanks to the excellent work that so many of our students are doing each year. Also, we have increasing numbers of Institute Alumni who are now established professionals coming back to commission projects– a most virtuous circle.
The process of partner recruitment takes place over many months, with iterative meetings leading to the elaboration of a project proposal that is realistic for first-year MINT students. The projects usually present a real research need of the partner that our students can meaningfully contribute towards filling, asking our students to apply their skills of critical analysis to the pragmatic realities faced by their partners. Although we expect our students to work with autonomy, this process requires some accompaniment and patience, and we look for partners who understand that we are training the next generation of policy-makers, practitioners, managers and leaders. Our best partners take this role very seriously, and bring a spirit of care and benevolent guidance to the process.
How do you find the ARPs have changed over the years, in terms of management, faculty and student engagement?
Academic supervision of the 70 projects each year is assured by a team of 14 dedicated Faculty Leads. These colleagues are established experts in their own field of practice, and provide the crucial bridge between academic research and practitioner realities. Our Faculty Leads are deeply committed teachers who give all they can to bring out the very best in our students. Their work is especially crucial as the Institute’s public-facing reputation is also on the line with the ARPs. Faculty Leads ensure academic rigour, professionalism, and student group cohesion, which can be a most daunting challenge, and yet each year, they rise to the occasion and the whole Institute benefits.
In recent years, we have also found ways to mitigate the perennial challenge of successful group collaboration. The ARPs force a group of students from different backgrounds, academic cultures, and personalities to work together for 8 months on outputs that will receive a shared grade. Imagine the problems that can arise! Teamwork, honest and respectful communication, empathy, patience, fair distribution of workload, personal accountability…. these might be the most important learnings that the ARP offers to our students. However, this is not obvious, and certainly not easy, especially when contemporary education systems and much of work culture remain about individualism and competition. In recent years we have integrated a compulsory Applied Research Foundations 6 ECTS course in the first semester to better guide and equip our students with the skills needed to successfully complete the ARP and to help our students work together more effectively. We also now implement an ARP Review Committee with the Direction of Studies for groups that struggle to collaborate; students now have the possibility of failing the ARP, and dysfunctional projects can simply be pre-maturely ended. I have been impressed by how quickly students can figure out how to collaborate when the stakes are high enough.
What is an element of the ARPs that you find always inspires students?
One of my biggest troubles with working on issues relating to international relations and development is the vast distance between Geneva and the people who we are actually committed to serving. Our projects are very often about improving the conditions of life for people affected by war, poverty, or any of the innumerable injustices faced on a daily basis across the world. Yet much of what happens in Geneva is about meetings and reports and numbers and infographics– the proximity that is required for true understanding that might lead to meaningful change is mostly absent. The ARPs thus endeavour to ‘keep it real’ for the students, and for the partners, and to get as proximate as we can. We foreground the humanity in all of this work, and try to stay honest about the persisting limitations and failures of the international system. We try very hard to learn and to do better. With all of this privilege and all of this brain power and all of this passion for dignity, justice and all the other aspirational foundations on which Geneva stands: what else could we do? Inspiration takes work, and so we keep working.
