Meet the Team

Laleh Ashrafi

Co-Founder & Publisher

Laleh Ashrafi, the founder of World Dip Magazine, is an –International Relations graduate student at Webster Vienna Private University with a  background in the field of Linguistic and Literature. Her passion for learning the German language additionally to Farsi and Russian brought her to Vienna. Having a rich background in humanitarian activities in different countries including Afghanistan lends her a wider perspective on immigration and War studies which are her main focuses

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Bridget Carter

Co-Founder & Editor in Chief

Co-founder of World Dip magazine, Bridget is an International Relations graduate student at Webster Vienna Private University where her areas of focus include gender dimensions of post-conflict development. She was born in Texas, grew up in California, lived in Bangkok, and now calls Vienna home. Her background in the field of forensic science and journalistic writing give her a unique perspective from which to approach various topics of international relations. Her written work has been featured in Austin Monthly magazine, The Chronicle, The Ten-Twenty, and Metropole magazine. 

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Katie Loscher

Editor & Designer

Katie Loscher, originally from Illinois, has spent the past five years living in Vienna. Currently a graduate student at Webster Vienna Private University, she studies international relations and would like to focus her research on security studies and foreign policy.

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Heidi Böening

Print Cover & Logo Design

Heidi Böening from California is a woman who gives a damn. She is currently a graphic designer, business owner, and International Relations graduate student at Webster Vienna Private University. She is also currently interning at the Public Information & Communications office for the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency).

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Oliver Herrmann-Preschnofsky

Editor

Oliver is a graduate student in the International Relations Department at Webster Vienna Private University. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism & Media Management from FHWien der WKW in Vienna. He currently works as Editor in Chief of TeamLiquid, and as Research staff for the Austrian Press Agency (APA) and

MINDS international.

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Aika Maeda

Photographer

Aika is a photographer for World Dip Magazine and an undergraduate student at Webster Vienna Private University. She is from Osaka, Japan and came to Vienna to study Psychology. She does portrait and street photography as her hobby but also takes photos during university events.

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Alireza Shahabi Sirjani

Contributing Writer

Alireza Shahabi Sirjani studied his BA in International Relations at WVPU where he is currently studying his MA in the same field. Prior to studying IR, he studied Architecture at the Technical University of Vienna. He has interned in a number of architectural offices as well as international organizations such as the International Atomic Energy Agency. He is a member of the CTBT Youth Group and his interests in the field if International Relations fall mainly in the area of arms control.

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Szonja Benczik

Contributing Writer

Szonja from Budapest is an undergraduate student at Webster Vienna Private University where she majors in International Relations and minors in History and Management. Her main areas of interest include Central European studies and environmental issues. She came to Vienna to take advantage of the opportunities the city has to offer for IR students, but is also completely amazed by the architecture and culture of the Austrian capital. She is also involved in reporting on university events and writing about cultural topics for World Dip magazine.

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Anna Gorbatyuk

Contributing Writer

Anna is an undergraduate International Relations student at Webster University with minors in Economics and Philosophy. Originally from Ukraine, she came to Vienna to continue her academic studies and professional development in the public policy field. Anna has a wide array of interests ranging from humanitarian aid affairs to global economic disparities. Currently she is developing an online platform with a global perspective for Webster students to facilitate academic exchange.

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Yelizaveta Andakulova

Contributing Writer

Yelizaveta Andakulova is an International Relations graduate student at Webster Vienna Private University. Her research interests include EU foreign and defense policies and diplomacy. She enjoys living in Vienna where she has the opportunity to savor different musical and cinema events, as well as centuries-old architecture.

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Rebecca Canak

Contributing Writer

Rebecca Canak is a graduate student in Webster University's Global International Relations program where she is earning her MA while studying in the Netherlands, Thailand, Ghana, Austria, and Switzerland. She attributes her interest in international affairs to growing up in the U.S. - Mexico border El Paso, Texas. Following a degree in Creative Writing and Global Studies, she spent three years traveling around Southeast Asia and South America as a freelance writer and ESL teacher. Her areas of interest include education, the refugee crisis, and women's rights. Update: Rebecca completed her MA in 2019 and is currently working as an analyst for a non-profit on the U.S.-Mexico border that provides free legal services to asylum seekers and refugees.

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Deborah Aberastury

Contributing Writer

Deborah is a graduate student in the International Relations Department at WVPU. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree in International Relations with a minor in Spanish from Webster University, St. Louis, MO. Previously, she has studied abroad in Greece and England. Aberastury also writes for Pasquines and Voy Abroad and has entered with the US State Department and the Missouri Coordinated Democratic campaign.

Top books every IR student should read -- Part I

As recommended by WVPU professors

Consolidated by Bridget Carter and Laleh Ashrafi 

From classic texts written by Henry Kissinger and Francis Fukuyama to uncommon reads on subjects like neurobiology and the strategic dimensions of collective behavior, WVPU international relations professors share some of their favorite books. World Dip has your winter reading list covered. So kick back, relax, and take a dip. 

A World Restored by Henry Kissinger is an “absolute must-read” for IR students. 

Dr. Jozef Bátora tells why: Originally Henry Kissinger's Ph.D. dissertation at Harvard, this book is an absolute must-read for anyone interested in the formation of the modern international order, processes of its stability and change, the role of legitimacy in changing international orders, and how seemingly contrasting principles can co-exist and generate stability. Its level of analysis shifts between macro-level processes and micro-level personal details from the lives of actors involved. The sheer intellectual power and richness of almost every sentence here is amazing. For me, this is the best book Kissinger ever wrote.

Rediscovering Institutions: The Organizational Basis of Politics by James G. March and Johan P. Olsen has, according to Dr. Bátora,  systematically launched the so-called 'new institutionalism' in political science. Bátora says: It introduces an organization theory-oriented approach to analyzing domestic and international political institutions and their change. Generations of IR scholars have drawn upon the concepts of 'logic of appropriateness' and 'logic of consequences' introduced here without actually reading this book. As someone said some two decades ago, "we are all institutionalists now". Well, yes, but only if you actually get down to the roots and become acquainted with the classics of institutionalist theory.

Identity, Interest and Action: A Cultural Explanation of Sweden's Intervention in the Thirty Years War by Erik Ringmar captures a fundamental truth about IR. Bátora tells why: There are numerous books dealing with identity and the ways it impacts foreign policy making. This book is different in that it captures some of the fundamental mechanisms of how efforts to achieve and maintain an identity prompt certain types of actions by states. Ringmar's narratological perspective on IR is somewhat radical and, as a positivist, I do not necessarily share it tout court. But the book captures a fundamental truth about IR: non-material factors are just as important as the material ones in shaping states' and other actors' actions in the international realm.

The Righteous Mind – Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt falls under the moral psychology category, but Professor Ralph Schoellhammer tells us why it’s an important IR book: Jonathan Haidt does a great job demonstrating how moral intuitions influence our decision making, which plays a fundamental role in the way politics are constructed domestically and internationally. Focusing on the role of emotions in political preference formation, the author convincingly shows that the idea of a purely rationalist and coolly detached world of politics is impossible.

The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama and The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order by Samuel P. Huntington are dually recommended by Schoellhammer, because he says: they are often referred to, but just as often not thoroughly read. He goes on to say: Both books concern themselves with the question of liberal democracy and the question of its universality as well as its sustainability, so one can read them as a dialogue between the authors. While Fukuyama claims that liberal democracy has emerged in the West, it is based on universal principles that will allow its implementation everywhere regardless of existing traditional values. Huntington, on the other hand, sees liberal democracy as specifically Western, and warns that attempts of spreading it will cause more harm than good.

The Square and the Tower: Networks, Hierarchies, and the Struggle for Global Power by Niall Ferguson is the first attempt to use network analysis in a new approach to historical events, says Schoellhammer who describes Ferguson’s book as providing historical comparisons and fascinating insights. Schoellhammer says this book is not just dominated by visible hierarchies but also by sometimes invisible and hard-to-measure networks. 

Dr. Elina Brutschin recommends: The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers by Paul Kennedy exploring the politics and economics of the Great Powers from 1500 to 1980 and the reason for their decline. Because Brutschin says “every IR student should know about history.” 

The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics is a book by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith discussing how politicians gain and retain political power. Brutschin recommends this book because  “IR students should understand the strategic dimensions of collective behavior.” 

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert Sapolsky is a text the New York Times dubs as a book “you’ll wish you had in college.” Sapolsky guides the reader through the complexities of neurobiology with “hipster humor,” as the New York Times puts it. Brutschin notes its importance because “IR students should understand what drives individual behavior.”

WVPU’s Associate Director and IR Professor Dr. Samuel Schubert: A glimpse of the past

This spring World Dip meets with WVPU Associate Director Dr. Samuel Schubert to get an inside look at his life before working in academia. 

By Bridget Carter

April 2019

I meet with Dr. Schubert on a Monday afternoon. It’s a cold, gray day and the reverberating traffic serves as a backdrop to his office of family photos, book shelves, and stacked papers. I listen as he reminisces on his former years before working in academia. Clad in suit-and-tie with an espresso in hand, he recounts working on projects for multiple UN organizations wherever there was a demand. 

“The international civil service is a very specific kind of life,” he describes. “This created a very international lifestyle.” A very specific kind of life, indeed. 

Missions abroad

Schubert’s work took him to politically sensitive areas working as a UN missions expert in  Jamaica, Sri Lanka, and varying countries in Africa and the Middle East to promote and build intermediary governmental institutions. His missions focused primarily on development work for which knowledge of computers and telecommunication technologies were essential. 

Traveling from Vienna to the field with UN bluebook in hand, there was one specific goal in mind: “to leave behind a sustainable operation,” he says. The job usually involved spending months preparing for a specific mission abroad; once there, he could expect to be on the ground between three weeks and three months. 

“The international civil service is a very specific kind of life.”

Adaptation: key skill

This involved a great deal of adaptation, so much so that he recommends this as being one of the key skills for working in international civil service. “It’s about adapting and trying to understand how you get into other people’s shoes,” he says. He notes that constant adaptation both to new environments as well as the transition back home is inevitably part of the job and essential for success. 

Now on his second espresso, he rhetorically asks the existential questions: “What are people’s issues, values, and dreams?” How does their world look to them?” And perhaps we, too, should ask these questions more often.

Today, working in a very different world of academia, Dr. Schubert is well-known by WVPU IR students for his narrative-style of teaching and rigorous courses on International Relations Theory, Middle East Area Studies, and Terrorism. 

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Bridget Carter, the Co-Founder of World Dip magazine, is an International Relations graduate student at Webster Vienna Private University where her areas of focus include gender dimensions of migration and post-conflict development. Her background in the field of forensic science and journalistic writing give her a unique perspective from which to approach various topics of international relations. Her written work has been featured in Austin Monthly magazine, The Chronicle, and The Ten-Twenty. She also rocks her own blog: There She Goes Travels. Bridget has trekked the southern Himalayan Region, sailed the Mekong River from Thailand into Laos, and traveled and lived in her 1986 Mini-Cruiser camper in the desert of West Texas. Her grit and passion make her one hell of a story teller.