As the inaugural Research Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House, alumna Stephanie Herrmann has already had access to policy makers on the world stage. 

In July, her first month into the fellowship, she helped to organize a Perry World House panel, “The National Security Election: What’s at Stake in 2016 and Beyond,” bringing together experts such as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. 

Herrmann, an international relations major who graduated from Penn in May, first became interested in global affairs in high school, through a program that enabled her to participate in Model United Nations discussions in Latin America. 

While an undergraduate at Penn, she found more opportunities to travel and engage with human rights frameworks rooted in political, economic and cultural development. She served on the Penn delegation of the Peace and Dialogue Leadership Initiative, worked as a summer researcher at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences and founded Project Proactive, an education initiative that taught conflict prevention designed around curricular activities for high school students. She also completed a graduate certificate in global human rights, an interdisciplinary study on human rights policy that allowed her to take graduate-level courses in the School of Arts & Sciences, Law School and School of Social Policy & Practice.

Last summer, as an immigration and refugee policy intern at HIAS National, an international migration and refugee resettlement agency in Washington, D.C., Herrmann witnessed the impact of law and policy on refugees and human rights institutions firsthand. 

She says she now hopes to build on her understanding of policy through the year-long Perry World House fellowship. 

“As a student, I was able to explore post-conflict development, displacement and human rights, but I have not engaged as thoroughly with other aspects of conflict in international relations, such as security or foreign aid,” says Herrmann. “I hope that, by studying these areas in depth, I will gain a better sense of how to make an effective impact in the human rights field.” 

As a Perry World House Research Fellow, she will contribute to research output, including projects such as white papers, articles and planning activities for the Global Innovation Program. 

It “is a rewarding and exciting learning experience,” Herrmann says. “The atmosphere is very inclusive. No two days are the same, and we operate with an ‘all hands on deck’ mentality.” 

Right now, she’s collaborating with Perry World House staff to compile a Penn research digest for the upcoming United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development in Quito, Ecuador. 

“This fellowship is an opportunity to work in myriad areas: research, writing, curricular design, startup culture, think tank culture and bridging academia with policy,” Herrmann says. 

She is also on the planning team for PWH’s formal grand opening Sept. 19-20, which will include a Global Policy Forum on the future of U.S. foreign policy, keynote lectures with global leaders and a ribbon-cutting for the new PWH building at 38th Street & Locust Walk. It will be hosted by Penn President Amy Gutmann. 

When it opens, Perry World House will convene conversations on pressing global questions, catalyze interdisciplinary research and connect Penn to the world. 

Most of all, Herrmann is looking forward to engaging with the 25 undergraduate Perry World House Student Fellows on issues surrounding global affairs, as she says it’s something that she would have pursued.

She now aspires to become an international human rights lawyer and plans to apply to law and graduate programs by the end of the academic year.