Political Science and International Affairs Departmental Reception

The JCU Department of Political Science and International Affairs hosted its first Departmental Reception on Tuesday, November 7. Professors Bridget Welsh and Michael Driessen welcomed alumni, current students, and fellow-instructors in the Aula Magna. The alumni who attended were introduced to professors Eszter Salgó and Seth Jaffe, who then presented their latest publications to the audience.

Departmental Reception

Professor Salgó’s Images from Paradise: The Visual Communication of the European Union’s Federalist Utopia focuses on the role of the iconography of the European Union, from the Euro banknotes to the architecture of the European Parliament, and its use of Greek mythology to represent linear growth.

In his Thucydides on the Outbreak of War: Character and Contest, Professor Jaffe argues that one of the most striking achievements of Thucydides’ lies in the universalization of an atrocious historic event – the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides, reflects on the two factions of the war, the Athenians and Spartans, and extracts from each a different facet of the human nature, which he believes to be inalterable and universal.

After the two presentations, Professor Driessen also introduced JCU Professor Camil Roman, a recent Cambridge Ph.D. graduate, and all the other professors present: Pamela Harris, Federigo Argentieri, and Alberto Schepisi. Professor Driessen then discussed the new opportunities of the upcoming Mentorship Program, whose spirit of fellowship of students and alumni was also at the heart of the Departmental Reception.

The alumni who attended introduced themselves to the current students and to the new professors. In particular, Lucrezia Lo Schiavo conveyed the first impressions of her return to Rome after her experience in Brussels, and Natasha di Genova talked about her new position – that became official on that very day – at the World Food Programme.