Luís Campani | Political Science and International Relations

Luis Campani

Bachelor of Political Science and International Relations

“Hello, my name is Luís and I am a second year student of Political Science and International Relations. It was something that came naturally, I've always liked culture, I've always been very interested in political debates and I went after an International Relations course because I'm interested in a diplomatic career and I ended up studying both, Political Science and International Relations. When I started college I wanted to do research, I had that very clear in my head, so I thought what the GIRI Hub would be, which was founded by Professor Sabrina. At the time, we had texts to read and our first project was the creation of a bank of cases to be simulated in Secondary Education and later, within this research group, I began to write a “paper” on the use of artificial intelligence in the context of military, more specifically about debating in Portuguese and Spanish with Samuel, Gustavo and Professor Sabrina, and it was also one of the reasons why the opportunities arose.

In June of last year I helped organize an event here in Lusófona on the subject and that's how I ended up getting to know the InterAgency Institute, being the think thank for which I went there to speak. InterAgency organized the event here and we, as GIRI Hub students, provided logistical help and also a little newsletters, on the day too, and the event was about the topic I went there to talk about, so I ended up joining InterAgency a few months later, first to do the social networks and then to affiliated researcher and it was through this opportunity that I was able to go first to the event in Luxembourg, which was an event of the Luxembourg government itself on the subject and then also to go to the UN to talk about it. In the current mandate, Cher had the obligation to create a consensus document among the countries that ratified the Convention and I participated in the last session of that mandate as a member of civil society.

It was a very difficult experience to 'get it straight', to understand that I went and did that. It was a week in which you dialogue with decision makers, with other people from civil society, with people who are part of the process of building public policies, at an international level, of international legislation, and it ends up being very enriching. If one day you work long hours, but then you look back and think “wow, that day was super productive”, even though sometimes in the meeting you spent half an hour discussing a verb, sometimes you are talking to a person during this in the cafe next door, discovers various aspects of how delegations think about this and that.

Lusófona has contributed to my path precisely because of these opportunities at the GIRI Hub and also because Professor Sabrina uses several different methods in the classroom. She did the UN simulation, for example. Who knew, one year I was doing a UN simulation here in the classroom and the next year I was there speaking. This was an opportunity that, from a practice to what I would do professionally, this is interesting. Our field has many barriers to entry, both in Political Science and International Relations. If you manage to use your college years to build a portfolio of work experience, it's ideal, because you can fall into the illusion that when you leave here you need a master's degree and after the master's degree you'll find a job, but if you If you don't have experience in that midfield, it won't necessarily happen.”