Anna Levy has more than 15 years of experience as a practitioner, researcher, oral historian, and analyst of crisis and development politics, the political economy of aid, transparency and accountability, civic and political space, governance ethics, displacement and borders, food and land justice, dissent and whistleblowing, structural inequality, and historical memory. Since founding Jafsadi.works in 2015, an independent consulting collective focused on mapping and advancing structural accountability from community, policy, and movement perspectives, she has worked on related issues with over 30 partners and collaborators including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), RFK Human Rights, Movimiento Agroecológico de América Latina y el Caribe (MAELA), the World Health Organization (WHO), Feed the Truth, the Center for Civic Design, the Oral History Summer School, the Government Accountability Project, the Security in Context collective, Beautiful Rising, the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, and Transparency International, among others. Since 2018, she has been teaching on humanitarian, emergency, and development politics at Fordham University. She holds a Master's degree focused on political and economic transitions, community and oral history, from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs and is an avid capoeirista. Anna's ongoing work is most influenced by the three regions where she has spent significant time: the Levant, Middle East, Mesoamerica, and the Northeast United States.
This course examines the inner workings of successful international public service projects and gives students the opportunity to design one or more themselves. Students will then study the characteristics of effective programs, which bring together a series of projects for mutually supportive and concerted action. Particular attention is paid to programs selected from the five areas where international public sector entities are most active: peace building, relief, development, advocacy and norm-setting. Case studies will be used in each of these areas to gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between policy and implementation.
In the context of a growing number of intersecting local, national, and global crises, each warranting political strategy, operational responses, and humanitarian planning across a range of states, agencies, movements, technical and political actors, this course focuses on exploring: the relationships between and among decision-makers and affected populations; the political economy of resource mobilization and distribution; the practical tools, frameworks, and blueprints used for response; questions of power in the context of emergency, and; historical determinants of humanitarian need, responsibility, and intervention.
This course digs deeply into the political economy, politics, infrastructure, design, incentives, and dilemmas related to the current development and emergency paradigms, with specific exploration of what constitutes humanitarian action, aid, response, and ethics. Blending both practitioner and theoretical perspectives, this course takes a critical approach to the evolution of development concepts, slow and fast emergency, and structural inequality as they are shaped by historical events and processes, institutions, and ideologies - while simultaneously exploring the role of contemporary aid systems, political and social responses in perpetuating and remedying each. There is special emphasis on the perspectives and vantage points of people most directly affected by perpetual emergency. While not centered on or around the COVID-19 pandemic that has shaped our lives for the last three years, we will incorporate its context and reference it as an embodied case for better understanding the realities and power dynamics affecting “local populations” that we often speak about in this work, as well as a growing field of policy research and practice surrounding compounding crises, or “polycrises.”
Throughout the course, which will utilize active learning modalities such as simulations, large and small group discussion, mapping and platform analysis, analysis of films, discussion of readings, guest speakers from other geographies, and individual reflection, we will engage (and often struggle with) fundamental (and technical) questions such as:
- What are the political, social and economic underpinnings of contemporary development, emergency, and humanitarian discourse?
- How does the design of development and humanitarian infrastructure and technical systems contribute to or alleviate structural inequality within and across societies as part of long-term development paradigms or short-term emergency response?
- What does it mean to be an individual engaged in humanitarian, emergency, and development work as an affected population, as a decision-maker, as an insider or outsider? As an individual or as part of an institution? What are the historical and contemporary sources of these roles, norms, and practices?
- What are the origins and starting points of an emergency? When can we say an emergency has ended?
- How does a focus on underlying causes and power relations change our analysis of the problems and solutions? Should politics be removed from practice & intervention or amplified?
- As people affected by an emergency are not a monolith, how can we define “local” and “sovereign” in mapping competing interests and power dynamics within communities affected by emergency?
- Should we reform or abandon the current humanitarian/development aid system toward alternatives?
Couples with CAP-GP.3227.
As part of the core curriculum of the NYU Wagner Masters program, Capstone teams spend an academic year addressing challenges and identifying opportunities for a client organization or conducting research on a pressing social question. Wagner's Capstone program provides students with a centerpiece of their graduate experience whereby they are able to experience first-hand turning the theory of their studies into practice under the guidance of an experienced faculty member. Projects require students to get up-to-speed quickly on a specific content or issue area; enhance key process skills including project management and teamwork; and develop competency in gathering, analyzing, and reporting out on data. Capstone requires students to interweave their learning in all these areas, and to do so in real time, in an unpredictable, complex, real-world environment.
This course examines the inner workings of successful international public service projects and gives students the opportunity to design one or more themselves. Students will then study the characteristics of effective programs, which bring together a series of projects for mutually supportive and concerted action. Particular attention is paid to programs selected from the five areas where international public sector entities are most active: peace building, relief, development, advocacy and norm-setting. Case studies will be used in each of these areas to gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between policy and implementation.
Couples with CAP-GP.3227.
As part of the core curriculum of the NYU Wagner Masters program, Capstone teams spend an academic year addressing challenges and identifying opportunities for a client organization or conducting research on a pressing social question. Wagner's Capstone program provides students with a centerpiece of their graduate experience whereby they are able to experience first-hand turning the theory of their studies into practice under the guidance of an experienced faculty member. Projects require students to get up-to-speed quickly on a specific content or issue area; enhance key process skills including project management and teamwork; and develop competency in gathering, analyzing, and reporting out on data. Capstone requires students to interweave their learning in all these areas, and to do so in real time, in an unpredictable, complex, real-world environment.