November Student Profile: Jessie Castello | Master of Peace and Conflict Studies

Jessie Castello is in her second year, and putting the finishing touches on her Masters of Peace and Conflict Studies degree. Before arriving at the University of Waterloo to study MPACS, Jessie graduated from the University of Toronto with a double major in International Relations and Peace, Conflict, and Justice in 2016. Jessie felt passionately about continuing her peace education after her undergrad, which brought her to MPACS.

After my undergrad I wasn’t sure if I wanted to pursue academia or more practical approaches to peace work, and MPACS does provide a good balance of the two. It has a flexible enough structure that you can try your hand at different things you might be interested in and figure out for yourself what your interests really are. MPACS has been practical and hands-on, which I really appreciate.

With the option to do an internship, work towards skill training, as well develop research skills, MPACS offers a wide variety of ways that students can customize their degree to best serve them. Jessie chose to take part in every one of those options. She is currently taking workshops within the Conflict Management Certificate Program, allowing her to practice mediation skills with trained professionals. Previously in her degree Jessie took a course on Peace Research, which required the completion of a major research project, intended to develop students’ capacity to apply research, analysis and writing skills towards a practical objective. Her research focused on the underlying forces fuelling ethnoterritorial conflict, using the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar as a case study. While she valued all of these courses immensely, for Jessie it was the internship that she found most impactful within her degree.

Jessie spent three months in Johannesburg, South Africa working as an intern with CIVICUS, an international alliance focused on strengthening citizen action and civil society globally. Their mandate includes protecting of the rights of civil society and strengthening civil society's influence. As a Policy & Research intern, Jessie worked with the ‘Advocacy & Campaigns’ and ‘Civic Space Research’ clusters within CIVICUS. Her work involved assisting with research updates for the CIVICUS Monitor, an online platform that tracks the state of civic space in 195 countries across the world. She also assisted with a range of other research and advocacy projects focused on the protection of civic freedoms.

With this new experience under her belt, Jessie is ready to look forward to what her education can offer her.

My internship with CIVICUS gave me hands-on experience with research and advocacy work in the human rights field which was an invaluable addition to my MPACS degree. After this experience I am feeling more confident and well-equipped, like I have much more of a sense of direction. I know I can take the skills I’ve learned in MPACS and apply them to a career.