Before she came to the School of Arts & Sciences to earn her Ph.D. in political science, Meghan Garrity worked around the world with humanitarian non-governmental organizations. In Haiti, South Sudan, Ethiopia, and Kenya, she was part of a team that would arrive immediately after emergencies like the Haitian earthquake. They would assess the situation, write proposals, and start up the aid programs, “then pass the baton,” she says. “But I realized I actually wanted to stay and see if these programs were successful.”
She began working for the International Rescue Committee in Jordan and Turkey, ultimately managing a $45 million portfolio of Syrian crisis response programs and a team of 1,600 staff and volunteers as deputy director of programs in Antakya, Turkey.
“After working on Syria for four years I was sort of disenchanted with the humanitarian field, and I wanted to understand more of the political undertones of what was really going on—what was driving these crises and why weren't we able to come up with solutions to them,” she says. “I felt like the humanitarian sector was sort of the Band-Aid on the bullet hole.”
Her experience as a student was informed by her work in the field: “Whenever I was writing a paper or in class, l would always think, okay, what is the practical implication of this? We study a lot of political science theories. Well, what does that mean on the ground? Does this abstract concept actually apply? Does it work? Do we care?”
The factors she’s identified are domestic and transnational alliances, whether the partners of the expelling state are in favor of the expulsion, and the reaction of what is considered to be the homeland state of the group to be expelled as well as the response of the international community. “Currently, much of the literature says the international community is a force for good,” says Garrity. “They can be a constraint, but I've actually found that they can be on both sides.”
She plans to include specific policy recommendations in her dissertation. During 2021, she had a pre-doctorate fellowship at the U.S. Institute of Peace, where the goal was to help shape her work to better inform policy makers and practitioners.
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