Mohammad Modares, Mitchell Scholarship, 2011–2012

“I initially attended Trinity College Dublin through the Mitchell Scholarship to be immersed in Ireland’s capital during a time when the country (and the rest of the world) was recovering from the global financial crisis. Ireland had received life support from the IMF just before I began my academic year so I wanted to witness top-down economic policies unfold, while gaining first-hand perspective of what the recovery process meant for the Irish public who had lived during the booming Celtic Tiger Years a few years prior. I was struck by the resilience, the struggle, the creativity and the hope of the everyday rebuilding process by the public. Learning how the slow economic recovery intertwined with other facets of Irish life and culture made economics more bearable in the classroom. My program was on international development in the context of developing countries, yet here I was in a modern country seeing people deal with new hardship – the fight against privatization of public services, government cuts in education and healthcare, the collapse of an entire industry, the need for jobs, etc. Then Occupy Wall Street protests made their way to Dame Street and a different city was born. My interest in Europe’s new age of development took me to other parts of Europe including Spain, Portugal, Italy, Albania and more. I left Ireland two years later with a masters degree and a whole new perspective on what I wanted to do in the world of international development. It all began at the JHU Fellowship Office. For the opportunity to experience what I did, I am forever thankful to the University for the scholarship nomination and the faculty and staff who helped me in the application process.”