Student Spotlight: Laura Quaglia

She has been a Graduate Research Fellow with the Policy Agendas Project since 2017, a Graduate Fellow with the Clements Center since 2019, and a 2019-2020 Brumley Graduate Fellow at the Robert Strauss Center. She holds a M.A. in International Strategic Studies (2016) and a B.A. in International Relations (2013) from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil where she was born. Her research interests include policy diffusion and agenda setting, national security policy, and political parties’ agendas – her dissertation analyses the diffusion of national security policies through the countries of the G20.

 

Previous Student Spotlights: 

 

Nathan Silverstein is a rising junior at UT-Austin and a recipient of our Student Professional Development Fund. He is majoring in Government, minoring in Polish Language, and is a member of Liberal Arts Honors (LAH). He is a recipient of the Foreign Language and Area Studies scholarship from the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (CREEES) for Polish. He is the founder and president of the Polish Club at UT, which last semester, in conjunction with the Clements Center and six other cosponsors, hosted the first democratically elected President of Poland and Nobel Peace Prize winner Lech Wałęsa. President Hartzell and Nathan delivered introductory speeches at the event.

This summer, Nathan is interning for President Wałęsa at the Lech Wałęsa Institute (LWI). Nathan helps plan many of President Wałęsa’s events around the world, is helping establish a U.S. headquarters for the LWI, and is assisting in redesigning the Institute’s website. “It is an incredible honor to intern for my personal hero, spread the President’s message, and advance his mission,” Nathan said. “Just as in the 1980s, President Wałęsa continues to fight for democracy, capitalism, and human rights and serve as an example to us all.”

 

Jake Cosgrove is a rising junior here at the Forty Acres, where he is double majoring in International Relations and Middle Eastern Studies alongside a minor in Arabic. He is an incoming Undergraduate Fellow at the Clements Center, and recently participated in the London Maymester where he joined the Clements cohort to study the US, UK, and World Order. Jake’s academic interests include exploring the history of the Middle East, with a focus on international security in the region since the Second World War. When not hanging around the Clements Center, Jake can be found running from meeting to meeting. Jake is a former Brumley Undergraduate Scholar with the Strauss Center, where he researched educational aid policy in regards to the Gaza Strip, and broadly how educational aid may mitigate violence in failing states. Jake is the Chief of Staff of Central Texas Model United Nations, and the Vice President of the International Relations and Global Studies Council. This Summer, Jake will be living in Amman, Jordan, where he is studying and researching humanitarian and educational aid in the region following the Syrian Civil War. 

 

Jessica Snyder is a class of 2022 graduate with a degree in Government and a certificate in Security Studies from the Clements Center.Throughout her studies, she focused on the role of political ideologies in creating environments for war and the tactics used to carry out information warfare. As a Clements Center Undergraduate Fellow, Jessica worked with Dr. Scott Wolford to create a database of interstate peace settlements. She also partnered with other Undergraduate Fellows to evacuate civilians from Afghanistan using open-source data analysis which contributed to the safe evacuation of hundreds of families. Jessica is a member of Pi Sigma Alpha, the National Political Science Honors Society, and served as the Academics Committee Chair for the International Affairs Society.

Following her graduation, Jessica attended the Clements Center Maymester program at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. She is now settled in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and working as a Commercial Cyber Consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton.

 

Max Ferguson is a U.S. Army Goodpaster Scholar, a PhD candidate at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, and a Clements Center Graduate Fellow. Recently promoted to lieutenant colonel, Max is a career Army officer with 17 years of active duty service as an Infantry officer, having deployed five times to Iraq, Afghanistan, and West Africa. He has also served as a Special Assistant to Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army and a White House Fellow in the Secretary of State’s Iran Action Group. His doctoral research focuses on coercive diplomacy in an effort to better understand U.S. national security policy making, politico-military relations, and how the United States applies its national power to resolve emerging crises. He is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. Upon completing his dissertation, Max will assume command of a light infantry battalion in the 10th Mountain Division. 

 

Daniel J. Samet is a third-year Ph.D. student in History, a Graduate Fellow at the Clements Center, and one of our Student Professional Development Fund recipients.This summer, Daniel is serving as a Foreign Policy Fellow with the Office of Senator Tom Cotton. He supports the Senator’s foreign policy team with writing legislation, conducting research, and meeting foreign dignitaries and other stakeholders. Daniel appreciates the opportunity to help protect our country against adversaries like China, Russia, and Iran. 

 

Angelina Braese is a rising junior at UT-Austin, where she is triple majoring in International Relations, Government, and European Studies within the Liberal Arts Honors program, and an incoming Undergraduate Fellow at the Clements Center. A native of Bosnia & Herzegovina, Angelina’s academic interests center greatly on the ethnic politics of the Western Balkans, EU public policy, and US-NATO relations. Recently named a National Security Education Program David L. Boren Scholar, Angelina will be moving to Croatia this coming January to pursue fluency in Croatian and hopes to later utilize those skills as a scholar and public servant focusing on bilateral relations of the US government with countries of the former Yugoslavia. On the Forty Acres, Angelina is a copy desk chief at The Daily Texan, research assistant within the Department of Germanic Studies, and a proud member of the Texas chapter of Consult Your Community — a 501(c)(3) that provides pro-bono consulting services to small, minority-owned businesses and local non-profit organizations. Professionally, she has served as a fellow for Magnify — Dr. Betsy Sinclair of WUSTL’s engagement software start-up — and will spend this coming summer interning at the Post-Conflict Research Center in Sarajevo. 

 

Jujhar Singh is a rising senior studying International Relations and Global Studies with a focus on the Middle East, and an Undergraduate Fellow at the Clements Center for National Security. He is also pursuing a Security Studies Certificate with the Clements Center. At UT-Austin, he served as a member of the International Affairs Society and Refugee Student Mentorship program, where he helped Afghan students adjust to American life at Austin elementary schools. Professionally he interned with a variety of organizations, including the Jordanian Embassy and American Enterprise Institute. Jujhar hopes to further explore non-proliferation, Latin American affairs, or European security in Washington DC as part of the Archer Fellowship Program in Fall 2022.