DNA of Peace Fellows
Michelle Helman
Clara Ramin
Michelle Helman is a Doctoral Candidate and Fellow in Peace and Health Innovation at UPEACE’s Global Center for Peace Innovation. She brings over twenty years of experience partnering on global, community-led initiatives to generate innovative solutions towards creating peace, justice, and health equity. Michelle holds a Masters in Peace and Conflict Studies, is a Rotary Peace Fellow, and serves as a Senior Fellow at the Center for Public Service at Portland State University. She is a certified mediator, Wilderness First Responder, and medical interpreter who learned to speak Spanish during her Peace Corps service in Perú.
Innovation Project: Peace-Tech & Health Equity
Michelle’s doctoral research study is a peace-tech and health equity innovation project that provides change agents the opportunity to strengthen their leadership, communication, and facilitation approaches so that they can design solutions to create the conditions that enable healing, peace, and justice. With her research partner, Green String Network (GSN), a Kenya-based non-for-profit, Michelle is engaging a design research and intervention approach that supports GSN’s internal organizational development process as they launch a mobile application that enables healing-centered peacebuilding and entrepreneurship with youth and women in East Africa. The anticipated findings of the study will contribute to existing research and provide actionable recommendations and resources applicable in and beyond the peace and health sectors.
Clara Ramin is a Ph.D. student, instructor, and coordinator of two MA programmes at University for Peace: Development Studies & Diplomacy, and Responsible Management and Sustainable Economic Development. She holds an MA in Environment, Development, and Peace with a specialization in Sustainable Natural Resource Management. Clara is from Germany and has over 12 years of experience living and working in Costa Rica on projects related to water, agriculture, and gender in rural communities. Her doctoral research is on water justice, river rights, community health, and environmental peacebuilding.
Innovation Project: River Rights as an Innovative Tool for Health & Environmental Peacebuilding
As part of a Costa Rican river’s movement, Clara has learnt about the challenges around river protection, water access, and water quality in the southern area of the country. Neoliberal economic activities not only affect community and environmental health, but also particularly threaten environmental defenders who mobilize for the protection of their territories. The purpose of Clara Ramin’s PhD research is to analyze how the establishment of particular river rights could be an innovative tool for promoting environmental and community health and support environmental peacebuilding efforts in communities of the Térraba basin in Costa Rica. In a time where the idea that nature has rights is gaining momentum, there is still much uncertainty about the outcomes and impact of this novel legal paradigm. This research will be conducted in close collaboration with water activists and community members and its outcomes aim to benefit local communities who are river protectors and who have created strong social movements, decisive to resist private and governmental neoliberal extractive development projects. This PhD study is supervised by Dr. Ken Conca at American University and Dr. Olivia Sylester at the University for Peace.
DNA of Peace Fellows
Michelle Helman
Clara Ramin
Michelle Helman is a Doctoral Candidate and Fellow in Peace and Health Innovation at UPEACE’s Global Center for Peace Innovation. She brings over twenty years of experience partnering on global, community-led initiatives to generate innovative solutions towards creating peace, justice, and health equity. Michelle holds a Masters in Peace and Conflict Studies, is a Rotary Peace Fellow, and serves as a Senior Fellow at the Center for Public Service at Portland State University. She is a certified mediator, Wilderness First Responder, and medical interpreter who learned to speak Spanish during her Peace Corps service in Perú.
Innovation Project: Peace-Tech & Health Equity
Michelle’s doctoral research study is a peace-tech and health equity innovation project that provides change agents the opportunity to strengthen their leadership, communication, and facilitation approaches so that they can design solutions to create the conditions that enable healing, peace, and justice. With her research partner, Green String Network (GSN), a Kenya-based non-for-profit, Michelle is engaging a design research and intervention approach that supports GSN’s internal organizational development process as they launch a mobile application that enables healing-centered peacebuilding and entrepreneurship with youth and women in East Africa. The anticipated findings of the study will contribute to existing research and provide actionable recommendations and resources applicable in and beyond the peace and health sectors.
Clara Ramin is a Ph.D. student, instructor, and coordinator of two MA programmes at University for Peace: Development Studies & Diplomacy, and Responsible Management and Sustainable Economic Development. She holds an MA in Environment, Development, and Peace with a specialization in Sustainable Natural Resource Management. Clara is from Germany and has over 12 years of experience living and working in Costa Rica on projects related to water, agriculture, and gender in rural communities. Her doctoral research is on water justice, river rights, community health, and environmental peacebuilding.
Innovation Project: River Rights as an Innovative Tool for Health & Environmental Peacebuilding
As part of a Costa Rican river’s movement, Clara has learnt about the challenges around river protection, water access, and water quality in the southern area of the country. Neoliberal economic activities not only affect community and environmental health, but also particularly threaten environmental defenders who mobilize for the protection of their territories. The purpose of Clara Ramin’s PhD research is to analyze how the establishment of particular river rights could be an innovative tool for promoting environmental and community health and support environmental peacebuilding efforts in communities of the Térraba basin in Costa Rica. In a time where the idea that nature has rights is gaining momentum, there is still much uncertainty about the outcomes and impact of this novel legal paradigm. This research will be conducted in close collaboration with water activists and community members and its outcomes aim to benefit local communities who are river protectors and who have created strong social movements, decisive to resist private and governmental neoliberal extractive development projects. This PhD study is supervised by Dr. Ken Conca at American University and Dr. Olivia Sylester at the University for Peace.
DNA of Peace Fellows
Michelle Helman
Michelle Helman is a Doctoral Candidate and Fellow in Peace and Health Innovation at UPEACE’s Global Center for Peace Innovation. She brings over twenty years of experience partnering on global, community-led initiatives to generate innovative solutions towards creating peace, justice, and health equity. Michelle holds a Masters in Peace and Conflict Studies, is a Rotary Peace Fellow, and serves as a Senior Fellow at the Center for Public Service at Portland State University. She is a certified mediator, Wilderness First Responder, and medical interpreter who learned to speak Spanish during her Peace Corps service in Perú.
Innovation Project: Peace-Tech & Health Equity
Michelle’s doctoral research study is a peace-tech and health equity innovation project that provides change agents the opportunity to strengthen their leadership, communication, and facilitation approaches so that they can design solutions to create the conditions that enable healing, peace, and justice. With her research partner, Green String Network (GSN), a Kenya-based non-for-profit, Michelle is engaging a design research and intervention approach that supports GSN’s internal organizational development process as they launch a mobile application that enables healing-centered peacebuilding and entrepreneurship with youth and women in East Africa. The anticipated findings of the study will contribute to existing research and provide actionable recommendations and resources applicable in and beyond the peace and health sectors.
Clara Ramin
Clara Ramin is a Ph.D. student, instructor, and coordinator of two MA programmes at University for Peace: Development Studies & Diplomacy, and Responsible Management and Sustainable Economic Development. She holds an MA in Environment, Development, and Peace with a specialization in Sustainable Natural Resource Management. Clara is from Germany and has over 12 years of experience living and working in Costa Rica on projects related to water, agriculture, and gender in rural communities. Her doctoral research is on water justice, river rights, community health, and environmental peacebuilding.