Becoming a Global Citizen: Welcome to Perry World House

Event Description

Perry World House (PWH) serves as Penn’s hub for global policy engagement. PWH helps to prepare students to be well-informed, engaged global citizens by providing them with opportunities to interact directly with policymakers and global leaders through our events, coffee chats, and student engagement programs such as the Graduate Associates and World House Student Fellows. PWH prides itself on collaborating with all twelve schools at Penn, and new students are encouraged to learn more about our interdisciplinary work. 

To discuss what Perry World House is, its engagement in the global policymaking community, and how students can get involved, we will be joined by Professor Simon Richter, the Class of 1965 endowed term professor of German and Gregory College House faculty director; Lauren Anderson, director of programs at PWH; and John Macri, student programs coordinator at PWH. Professor Richter will discuss his work on climate adaptation with an emphasis on sea-level rise as part of a larger conversation about joining global policy spaces to make a global impact.  

Professor Richter works with students as artists and researchers to produce animated videos about cultural aspects of climate adaptation in the Netherlands and other low-lying regions. Thanks to his avatar, Professor Poldergeist, he and his team have established a platform for informing and influencing policymakers about the difficult decisions that lie ahead. Check out his videos here and read about the Amsterdam premiere of “How do the climate futures of Jakarta and the Netherlands compare” here. Professor Richter also recently released a documentary, A New Peace of Münster, to imagine a world where humans must move with rising sea levels and higher river levels. An interview about the film with Professor Richter can be found on our Instagram account.