an Aggie in Malawi

A student of mine, Brittany Simington, is in Malawi — her first trip ever outside of the United States. She is there working on an exploratory study on women and the law, particularly the opportunities available for women to pursue law careers, and potentially political office. Her trip has been funded by the generosity of a senior colleague in my department and an alumnus from Texas A&M.

She has started a blog, and this is from her first post:

Will I take complete advantage of this opportunity? Will this really help women? Do I have the power and the tenacity right now to use the funding of someone else to produce something useful and substantive?

I’m confident the answer to the first and last question is yes — and I’m hoping for the same for question #2. Brittany was a top student in the African Politics class I taught at TAMU last year and was then hired on as a Research Assistant to the Project for Equity, Representation and Governance (PERG). She spent the past summer at the Ralph Bunche Institute at Duke University and TRIALS at Harvard Law School. She is the first undergraduate at TAMU that I’ve helped get to Malawi, but I certainly hope she’s not the last.

Brittany will be based in Zomba, Malawi, guided by excellent researcher and friend Augustine Harawa of IKI-Malawi. She has 17 days on the ground to gather some initial impressions. I’m excited to see what she’ll learn. You can follow her blog here.