Student spotlight: Marin Callaway

“Majoring in international relations has taught me to maintain a global perspective,” says Marin Callaway '18.

“It has also given me an incredible knowledge of history and current events that has continuously proved useful in jobs.” Marin, who was also a peer advisor in the IR program, says she was attracted to the interdisciplinary nature of IR which allowed her to study Latin America through the lenses of security studies, culture, history, language, and political science.

Throughout her time at Stanford, she has been heavily involved in Stanford in Government (SIG), serving on the board twice. She also worked as an Academic Theme Associate in the Crothers Global Citizenship dorm and was on the board of the Jewish Student Association her sophomore year.

Her favorite class at Stanford was Diplomacy on the Ground: Case Studies in Representing Your Country, through which she wrote a research paper on dissent by U.S. diplomats in Latin America during the Cold War. “I enjoyed learning about the history of U.S. foreign policy and reading specific case studies of diplomacy,” she says.

Marin has coupled her interest in Latin America with a number of internship and research opportunities relating to the region. After her freshman year, she spent a month in Oaxaca, Mexico, with the Bing Overseas Studies Program's Community Health program. “I lived with a family behind the bakery they owned and loved every minute of it,” she says.

The summer before her junior year she worked as a Mexico research intern at the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) in Sydney, Australia, through an FSI internship. Then she studied abroad in Santiago, Chile, and the next summer she interned at the U.S. State Department in the policy planning and coordination office of the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, where she tracked international engagement on the situation in Venezuela.

Marin recently finished an honors thesis through the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law about Mexican property rights in early California after the Mexican-American War, which received the program's outstanding thesis award.

“I am most proud of my varied interests and the opportunities that I have pursued to connect all of my passions from California history and politics to international security and Latin America,” says Marin as she reflects on her time at Stanford.

In the fall, she will start as an Advocate at the Alameda County Public Defender's Office in Oakland, and ultimately, she hopes to attend law school.

Congratulations Marin and best of luck!

Please join us in congratulating the class of 2018! As the academic year draws to a close, we are highlighting students graduating from across our 14 programs. Click here to view more student spotlights.