Colloquium | Members

Xiaoyu Shi

Xiaoyu is a sophomore at Tufts University. Originally from Nanjing, China, a city with a profound historical and cultural heritage, Xiaoyu was educated under a typical Chinese curriculum until she set foot in Tufts University. She is studying both International Relations and Computer Science in the hope that she could effectively utilize both skills in researching and analyzing data in a global context. Ever since high school, Xiaoyu has been on the academics team of the U-Model United Nations Conference (UMUNC) in China, which established partnership with UN My World Campaign in China earlier in 2015. Xiaoyu has been devoted to setting up a joint conference, modeling the policy-making of the European Union in UMUNC. By participating in this year's EPIIC, she is looking forward to enhancing her understanding of Europe's history and culture, as well as the dynamics behind current disputes in the European Union. Additionally, Xiaoyu has been playing the violin for 14 years, and she is a science fiction aficionado as she has a great interest in how political entities and humanity will evolve given the great enhancement in productivity.

Thorunn Sigurdardottir

Thorunn is a junior at Tufts, majoring in Political Science and English. She's originally from Reykjavik, Iceland but lived in London for ten years prior to coming to Tufts. She has a profound interest in history, great storytelling, and travel. After traveling in much of Europe, South Africa and China, she has also developed an interest in comparative politics. She finds it truly fascinating how the historical and cultural memories of people can dramatically change the political paths of states. As both an Icelandic and British citizen, she has experienced and seen a lot of change in both the European countries she calls home. She hopes that EPIIC: The Future of Europe will provide her with a deeper understanding of how Europe got to where it is today and how the continent needs to reflect on and reinvent its identity to emerge out of its many current crises.

Cody Valdes

TA

Cody is from Vancouver, Canada, where he was formed on a hockey rink, and graduated from Tufts University in 2013 with a Bachelors of Arts in Political Science, where he was formed in the productive tension between action and reflection. As an undergraduate in Tufts’ Institute for Global Leadership (IGL), he researched US foreign aid, oligarchy, and mass poverty in the Philippines and the impact of the Olympic Games on poor urban communities in Vancouver. He and his peers attempted to launch projects in the fields of renewable energy and conflict transformation in Rwanda and across the Israeli-Gaza border; they accomplished some but not everything they dreamed of, proving the importance of dreaming big. In 2010, he co-founded Sisi ni Amani Kenya with a fellow IGL alumna, a project that deploys SMS-based conflict response mechanisms and mobilises violence-prone Kenyan communities to mitigate political violence and strengthen hyperlocal civic dialogues. With Sisi ni Amani, he was a finalist in the World Bank’s Innovation Fair in Cape Town, South Africa and lived in Nairobi, Kenya in 2010-11 co-launching the project, which as of 2015 is under local leadership. He served for one year as the Undergraduate Coordinator of the IGL’s Empower Program for Social Entrepreneurship, in which capacity he worked to cohere a community of social entrepreneurs at Tufts and Fletcher rooted in sound ideas about the meaning of their work. During his undergraduate years he was part of the symposium planning committees for the year-long EPIIC colloquia on Global Cities (2008-9), South Asia (2010-11), and Conflict in the 21st Century (2011-12), which nourished his curiosity from his first days at Tufts. Since graduating he has not strayed far from his intellectual community at Tufts, where he continues to reflect on the existential, historical, and moral questions that life foisted on him during his most active years and to which he devoted himself as a junior and senior. He now serves as a Teacher’s Assistant and Research Assistant in political philosophy and international relations classes in Tufts’ Political Science department and the Institute for Global Leadership, helping his educators do for thoughtful students what they did for him a few years ago.

His elected task is to understand the character of modernity. He currently studies how philosophy and religion intervene in the rise and fall of civilisations. He enjoys thinking about themes such as decadence, nihilism, how societies handle the tension between faith and reason, and higher possibilities for individualism. He practices a traditional martial arts with the School of Oom Yung Doe and is trying his best to one day read classical Persian poetry.

Reece Wallace

Reece Wallace is a freshman from Houston, Texas. He is drawn to international studies by his fascination with the intersections of history, politics, and culture and is excited to apply these disciplines to an in-depth study of Europe's complex and uncertain future. He is particularly interested in the ongoing interactions between European secular and religious institutions as well as the various separatist movements that currently challenge individual nations and the European Union. He plans to incorporate his Spanish language knowledge into future research. In his free time, Reece enjoys listening to music, playing piano, and spending time with friends.

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