New SUPRA Students March 2023
We are happy to announce that we have four new students joining us for a hybrid version of the SUPRA Programme in March 2023! It is a pleasure to welcome:
Bjørge Bondevik, MA student of International Business and Politics, Copenhagen Business School
Bjørge is studying MSc in International Business and Politics at Copenhagen Business School, with a special focus on global value chains. He is currently writing his thesis on how various types of value chain interventions in the coffee industry affects smallholder livelihoods in Timor-Leste. Through the frameworks of global value chain analysis, and a sustainable livelihood approach, the thesis seeks to compare the impacts on farmer livelihoods of relationship coffee, Fairtrade, and conventional coffee. In addition to his academic interest in Timor-Leste, he has for many years been working with NGO-based student projects in the country and is currently leading the student organization Kria dalan. Bjørge took his bachelor’s degree in economics at NTNU in Trondheim, Norway.
KuKasina Kubaha, MA student of Languages and Cultures of Southeast Asia, The University of Hamburg
Kukasina Kubaha (she/they) is a MA student in Languages and Cultures of Southeast Asia at the Asien-Afrika Institut, Universität Hamburg, where she also assisted in digitizing one of the first repositories of Southeast Asian rare manuscripts. She has an interdisciplinary academic background that includes a BA in English Literature from Chulalongkorn University, and an Erasmus exchange semester in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Ljubljana. Her dissertation delves into the erased Queer lives, especially Queer Muslim Women, of Patani, the borderland of Thailand and Malaysia. By feeling her way through historical documents, poetry, art installations, and moving images, she attempts to map out the Patani Queer Archive, while also challenging the notion of the archive in its traditional sense. Outside of academia, she is a translator and an aspiring curator.
Marisa Olsen, MA student of International Development, Education and Sustainabilities, Oslo Metropolitan University
Marisa has a background in education and teaching. She is currently a MA student of International Development, Education and Sustainabilities at Oslo Metropolitan University. Her project focuses on the recent youth-led movement in Thailand (2020-2022) and the research is based on a four-month fieldwork in Thailand. The aim of the research is to explore the ways in which Thai youth are challenging traditional power structures in the socio-cultural and political sphere, and to investigate the implications for their political and social empowerment. The data is collected from conducting interviews of students and experts, as well as observations of protests and activism from September till December 2022.
Simon Kaack, MA student of Human Rights Studies, Lund University
Prior to his current master’s programme, Simon attained his BA in Political Science and Law at Leuphana University. He is also working as a student assistant at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) with a focus on climate policies, particularly in the context of India. Currently, he is completing an internship at UN ESCAP, focusing on sustainable transport solutions for the entire Asia-Pacific region. Simon’s thesis project aims to shed light on human rights implications arising from free trade agreements between the EU and Singapore and Vietnam, as well as the ongoing talks with Thailand. For the former, a content analysis shall determine in how far value-based trade agreements, as referred to by the EU, are implemented in practice. For the latter, a more future-oriented perspective including interviews with various stakeholders shall provide insights into negotiating priorities and if and how human rights are incorporated in these.