Director's Note

 

June 25th, 2024

 

Dear Sié Center Community,

I hope that each of you has successfully wrapped up your school year and that you are now looking forward to summer. I’m delighted to share with you our annual report (on our home page), which highlights the accomplishments of our community over this past terrific year.

We were lucky to add new faculty, postdocs, visiting scholars, and Sié Fellows to our community. We hosted or co-hosted more than 30 community events, including the Feminist Peace Summit, which brought more than 200 people to Denver from around the world. Our faculty produced cutting edge research, won major grants and awards, and excelled in the classroom. Our Sié Fellows and research assistants were active in organizing a host of activities, from powerful film screenings to a series of events marking ongoing atrocities in Gaza.

It would be impossible to distill all of the remarkable work and accomplishments of our community in a single message. But as a few highlights, we spent this year…

• Hosting two of our popular #SiéSimulations on security in the Horn of Africa and the Indo-Pacific, with Professors Hilary Matfess and Debak Das
• Watching our director Marie Berry win the Korbel School’s Outstanding Teaching Award and affiliated faculty member George DeMartino win the University Lecturer award, DU’s most distinguished award for scholarship
• Hosting 25 activists from across Latin America at our first ever Spanish-language IGLI Institute in Mexico City
• Hosting Nobel Peace Prize winner Leymah Gbowee in partnership with World Denver
• Hosting an interdisciplinary panel of faculty experts on the 2nd anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine
• Hosting our first ever Cultural Diplomacy course, taught by mezzo-soprano and Biden administration Arts Envoy Carla Dirlikov Canales
• Hosting nuclear experts Scott Sagan and Matt Fuhrmann, along with our own Debak Das, on nuclear threats and the future of global arms control
• Hosting the Halifax (HFX) Peace with Women fellowship cohort, as well as the book launch of Feminist Foreign Policy with authors Stephenie Foster and Susan Markham
• Hosting an incredible Feminist Peace Summit with renowned scholars and activists such as Cynthia Enloe, Margo Okazawa-Rey, Toni Haastrup, Sara Haghdoosti, Linda Burnham, Kavita Ramdas, Diana Lopez, Yanar Mohammed, Janene Yazzie, Lara Kiswani, Nana Gyamfi, and over 200 participants from around the world

At this time, we also want to congratulate our Sié Fellows who are graduating: Olivia Daigle, Phoebe Cribb, and Shifa Chowdhury. We can’t wait to see what each of you accomplish in your lives and careers, and hope you always see the Sié Center as a home for you!

We also want to congratulate our joint Oxfam-Sié postdoc Odmaa Narantungalag, who will be leaving us after 2 years to begin a tenure-track assistant professor position at Davidson College. We will miss her!

The vibrancy of the Sié Center is largely a result of the tireless work of our staff. So at the close of this academic year, my deep appreciation goes to Shannon Tweedy and Ashten Scheller, along with the many research assistants that support our work and events throughout the academic years.

I hope you are all able to find some time to rest and recharge this summer. I look forward to seeing you in the Fall!

All my very best,

 

Marie Berry, Ph.D.