Gabriella is delighted to be joining the Mansfield Center part-time as an International Program Coordinator. After spending three years living in Switzerland completing a bachelor's degree in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, her zest for travel brought her to the Netherlands in the fall of 2022 where she started a two-year Research Master in Cultural Sociology. This past fall, after one year biking the windy bridges of Rotterdam, she spent five months on an exchange in Wellington, New Zealand traversing wild terrain, lush forests and several hobbit holes.  Having returned to Missoula in December, she is completing the final semester of her degree remotely, writing a thesis on conscious consumption and the minimalist movement. Her other in-depth research pursuit involves analysis of materialistic values in TikTok influencer videos. In the future, she hopes to learn more about media literacy education.

 

Aside from travels during childhood, Gabriella owes much of her passion for international travel education to her experiences in Switzerland. Through her university's notable two-week academic travel courses, she studied Germany's postcolonial history as inscribed in its cityscape in Berlin and Hamburg, the literary history of Jewish Prague in the Czech Republic, storytelling and publishing processes in Venice, Zurich and Leipzig, and maritime art in Basel. She feels incredibly lucky and grateful to everyone who helped make her experiences possible and is inspired by the Mansfield Center's commitment to global dialogue. Having been a beneficiary of the hard work facilitated by an array of program coordinators in several corners of the world, she looks forward to working with the Mansfield Center in the hopes of providing similar opportunities to other brave, open-minded and curious global citizens. 

Combined Bachelor of Arts in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies - Franklin University Switzerland, 2021

 

Research Master of Science in the Sociology of Culture, Media and the Arts - Erasmus University Rotterdam, expected completion: June 2024