Team Meeting

This photo was taken by Andrew Conca-Cheng, who accompanied us on our trip and took some great photos. This is a photo of the team discussing our research towards the end of the trip. Although our days were mostly filled with interviews and site visits, we did make time to come together as a team a few times during the trip to discuss some of our key insights and to talk about where we thought the research was leading us. I was lucky to work with such an interesting and fun group of students, each of whom brought a different set of strengths and knowledge to the team. We had students from a wide range of AU masters programs, including: Global Environmental Politics, International Development, Ethics, Peace and Global Affairs, International Peace and Conflict Resolution, and International Affairs.

The Bus

This is a photo from inside the van that took us to our interviews and site visits throughout Israel and the West Bank every day. We spent many hours in the van over the course of the trip, and came to appreciate the expertise of our driver, who was familiar with the roads in both Israel and the West Bank, as well as the network of Israeli military checkpoints and border crossings that can make driving in the region difficult. One of the best things about this trip was that, thanks to our experienced driver and the meticulous planning of our instructor, Dr. Eric Abitbol, we never had to worry about the logistics of planning or getting to site visits and interviews. Instead, we were able to spend our time planning for interviews, analyzing our material, or relaxing.

 The van was where we frantically prepared for our interviews, at times too distracted to pay attention to the breathtaking scenery out the windows, or oblivious to the highly contentious borders that we would cross nearly every day. We always had one team member taking the lead on an interview, so it was important that that this person knew what we were trying to accomplish in the interview and which questions the team wanted each interviewee to answer. Any questions that we were unsure of, we would test out on our professors, Dr. Eric Abitbol and Dr. Ken Conca, who would tell us when a question was too vague, too sensitive, or on point. These sessions were undoubtedly some of the most important learning experiences for me because I learned how to be precise with the language that I used in order to maximize the quality and quantity of information that we were able to get from our interviewees in a limited amount of time.