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News December 09, 2025
SPIAccolades — December 2025
Elke Weber, a professor of psychology and public affairs and the Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy & the Environment, was the recipient of the 2025 I.N.S.P.I.R.E. Award from HEC Lausanne.Presented by the business school of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland since 2018, the I.N.S.P.I.R.E. award (“INspiring Success: Promoting Inclusion, Research, and Excellence”) recognizes “a researcher within the international academic community whose exemplary career inspires the next generation and encourages women's careers in academia,” according to the university’s story about Weber’s selection.Weber’s research focuses on…
SPIAction Newsletter
News December 05, 2025
SPIAction Newsletter — December 2025
Career Day Inspires Students to Reimagine Public ServiceThe event served as an opportunity for nearly 100 students to ask candid questions and learn about potential career paths.
Policy workshop group at Mpala Research Centre in central Kenya.
News December 04, 2025
Policy Workshops Offer SPIA Students Real-World Experience in Public Affairs
For nearly three decades, the policy workshop has been a cornerstone of the graduate program in public affairs at Princeton University. Building on the analytical skills acquired in the first year, the workshops are designed to help students strengthen skills like collaboration and consensus building that are not typically taught in academic settings.“When you work on policy, it’s less about the individual and more about bringing people together from different groups. That’s why public policy is so hard,” said Eduardo Bhatia, the John L Weinberg/Goldman Sachs & Co. Visiting Professor and a visiting lecturer at the Princeton School of Public and…
Democracy and Inequality in India: Political Economy of a Troubled Giant book cover
News December 02, 2025
India, ‘a Troubled Giant,’ the Subject of New Faculty Book
Home to nearly 1.5 billion people, India is the world’s largest democracy – for now. According to the Journal of Democracy, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “government has engaged in what is, by some accounts, a wholesale dismantling of democratic institutions, norms, and practices.”“At a time when autocrats are increasingly assertive, the cause of democracy can ill afford a loss of India’s magnitude,” the publication notes.In a new book, Princeton School of Public and International Affairs faculty member Atul Kohli and the University of Toronto’s Kanta Murali, a 2012 Ph.D. graduate of Princeton, point to a root cause of India’s democratic backsliding:…
Melissa Parnagian (front, center) with NHL Player Inclusion Coalition. Photo Credit: Melissa Parnagian
News November 24, 2025
Melissa Parnagian ’17 Helps NHL Players Elevate the Causes They Care About
Michael Eyssimont tried hard to ignore the symptoms.As a college student, the future forward in the National Hockey League couldn’t maintain his weight or energy levels. Despite being a young and active hockey player, he needed to catch his breath after walking up a set of stairs. After months of denial, his coaches finally convinced him to go to a hospital, where he was diagnosed with Crohn's disease, a chronic inflammatory bowel condition.Earlier this year, Melissa Parnagian ’17, the NHL’s senior manager for player programs and culture initiatives, recognized the potential of Eyssimont’s story to help others. With his condition under control and his…
Ranen Miao, MPA ’26
Community Profile November 20, 2025
#PolicyProfile: Ranen Miao, MPA ’26
“I’ve always had many different interests, but civil rights and economic justice are my core passions. I hope to build systems that treat every person with dignity, including closing the racial wealth gap, ensuring gender equality, and protecting LGBTQIA+ rights. I feel a personal connection to these issues, and I view them as fundamental problems we must address to realize the promise of the American Dream and opportunity for all people. In college, I tried to learn from every corner of the public sector, including through 13 internships about reproductive freedom, environmental justice, voting rights, and federal policymaking on the Hill. I interned…
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News November 20, 2025
SPIAccolades — November 2025
Layna Mosley, a professor of politics and international affairs, has spent the past two months flexing her scholarly muscles. In October, Mosley presented “Sovereign Debt Transparency: The Oversight Role of Parliamentarians” at an International Monetary Fund event. Her presentation focused on the politics surrounding debt transparency, what her research finds in terms of how the electoral cycle matters for debt transparency, and how investors (sometimes) reward governments that are more transparent.The Peter G. Peterson Foundation also invited Mosley to…
Rethinking the 1990s book cover
News November 18, 2025
New Book Takes a Fresh Look at the Nineties and Its Impacts Today
With the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, the reunification of Germany a year later, and the collapse of the Soviet Union a year after that, the 1990s were shaping up as a hopeful time for the West. Liberal democracy appeared to be ascendent, free trade was championed, and the catastrophic tragedies of two world wars and the Cold War were things of the past.That optimism now looks misplaced. Three decades later, global conflicts – one of them involving Russia’s invasion of a former Soviet Socialist Republic – continue, economic nationalism is on the rise, and ideological extremism grips numerous countries.So what happened?A newly published…
Michelle Feist, Seyron Foo, Kathy Roth-Douquet
News November 13, 2025
Industry Insiders: Princeton SPIA Alumni in Philanthropy
For more than 90 years, alumni from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs have had meaningful careers in a multitude of industries, perhaps none more so than the federal government. But as government cuts reduce opportunities for a new group of civil servants, Princeton SPIA alumni have stepped up to offer everything from advice to job references for their fellow Tigers.Three alumni with prominent careers in philanthropy — Kathy Roth-Douquet MPA ’91, CEO, Blue Star Families; Michelle Feist MPA ’97, senior program officer, Gates Foundation; and Seyron Foo MPA ’14, chief engagement and intergovernmental relations officer, Los Angeles…
computers
News November 11, 2025
Program on Science and Global Security Secures $500K Grant to Probe Emerging Tech and Nuclear Risk
In an era marked by rapid technological innovation and intensifying competition over global dominance, the Program on Science and Global Security (SGS) at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs has received a $500,000 grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York to investigate how the pursuit and deployment of emerging technologies for military advantage may reshape nuclear war risks and how global diplomacy could address the related security challenges.The two-year grant will support SGS’s efforts to provide independent, science-based analysis of technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum engineering, and space-based…
Sanyu Mojola's Death by Design book cover
News November 06, 2025
New Book Explores Racial Inequities in Washington D.C.
From the White House to the Washington Monument, imagery of the nation’s capital often conveys a sense of promise, hope, and justice for all. But for centuries, marginalized groups in Washington, D.C., have faced some of the country’s worst epidemics: from high maternal and infant mortality rates to homicide, drug addiction to HIV and AIDS outbreaks.Speaking about her new book, “Death by Design: Producing Racial Health Inequality in the Shadow of the Capitol,” (University of California Press), Sanyu Mojola, Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs and the Maurice P. During Professor of Demographic Studies, said, “I was struck by the fact that the…
Students gathering for Public Service Career Day
News November 04, 2025
From Ice Rinks to City Halls, Career Day Inspires Students to Reimagine Public Service
The renowned figures one encounters in a typical public-policy job are lawmakers and public officials, but Melissa Parnagian ’17 spends her days around professional hockey players.Parnagian, who works for the National Hockey League’s Social Impact, Growth Initiatives, and Legislative Affairs department, returned to Princeton last month as part of Public Service Career Day at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, where she joined two dozen alumni in sharing advice with students on how to pursue public service through a variety of tracks, including the private sector, law, nonprofits, education, local and state government, and…
SPIAction Newsletter
News November 03, 2025
SPIAction Newsletter — November 2025
Princeton SPIA Faculty, Staff, and Alumni Lead at ConferenceMore than 1,100 individuals, including more than 250 from Princeton SPIA, attended Many Minds, Many Stripes: A Princeton University Conference Celebrating Graduate Alumni.
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News October 30, 2025
SPIAccolades — October 2025
Tessa Lowinske Desmond, a professional specialist at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, is part of a team that was recently awarded a 2025 Indigenous Communities Fellowship by MIT Solve, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology initiative that seeks “exceptional and diverse solutions to the most pressing global challenges.”Desmond’s team, the East Coast Seedkeepers, was recognized for its work identifying, growing, researching, and saving ancestral seeds in partnership with people from Nanticoke and Lumbee communities to address food…
Pictured from Left: Bryan Manoo MPA ’26, Loreta Quarmine ’27, Karen Villanueva ’27, and Andres Solorzano ’27.
News October 28, 2025
First-Gen Trailblazers Bring Fresh Lens to Public Service
One day in class, Bryan Manoo MPA ’26 revealed something about himself he hadn’t told many people. A classmate was arguing against government subsidies, saying people tend to misuse them. Manoo, the child of street vendors in Mauritius, responded by sharing how government programs helped him go to school, pay for exams, and become the first person in his family to go to college — in the United States, no less.While his presence at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs enriches the classroom environment and gives his peers the opportunity to learn from someone with a uniquely different background, Manoo remembers that story for…