As part of the Summer 2022 ARIA program, I researched the concept of transnational solidarity in the field of political theory. Solidarity is often theorized between co-citizens, co-nationals, or co-religionists, but can solidarity also exist between strangers, across borders? Accordingly, I researched the history of the concept of solidarity and explored the contemporary theoretical debates about the possibility for transnational cooperative behavior.
I sought to pursue an ARIA project with Professor Catherine Lu because of my deep interest in the connections between political theory and international relations. I wanted to gain knowledge on transnational solidarity as a normative goal and as a practice, and my interest in this topic was boosted by the current international context, in which the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine generated many calls for ‘international’ or ‘global’ solidarity. I thus wished to investigate the concept and to see how such solidarity could be motivated and practiced. Additionally, I wanted to learn more about the academic world and the process of academic publication, and to sharpen my skills related to bibliographic search, to the construction of literature reviews and to the creation of research posters.
ARIA was one of the academic highlights of my undergraduate studies at McGill. The weekly in-person meetings with Professor Catherine Lu provided opportunities for extremely valuable mentorship. We were often joined by other research assistants and PhD students, which enriched conversation on the research topic, giving me the opportunity to explore a variety of points of view and to form ties with other students involved in academia. Another notable highlight was attending a two-day conference on transcending settler colonialism, which opened my eyes to the challenges of solidarity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples and sparked many engaging conversations. The conference not only brought together various Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars from across the world to discuss topics linked to colonialism and resistance, but also included the presentation of research posters by McGill graduate students, which provided many valuable examples for me as I began thinking of the research poster, I would have to produce at the end of the ARIA program.
Still, I faced some challenges throughout the summer. Since I worked from home for most of the ARIA program, I had to ensure I remained motivated and focused and that the remote aspect of the internship did not lead to feelings of isolation. Weekly meetings with my supervisor and regular emails helped me stay on track, and I additionally reached out to the other students completing an ARIA research project in the field of political theory in order to set up weekly group work sessions. Another student and I thus met up nearly every week to work together, and this helped me stay motivated. I also faced some challenges in managing my workload, since I had many articles to go through in order to produce a high-quality literature review on the topic. To overcome this difficulty, I reached out to the network of students I got to know throughout the summer and received many valuable tips from a PhD student on how to efficiently cover a large volume of articles.
The ARIA program has been crucial in shaping my future education and career path. It reaffirmed and expanded my interest in political theory and made the academic world much more accessible as I acquired more information on graduate studies and career options. I sincerely thank Mr. Harry Samuel for his incredible generosity that made this experience possible, and Professor Lu for all her support.
