California to Brno: A CDS Journey

By Elizabeth Sheridan, August 2024

Even before I finished my undergraduate studies, I had already decided that if I ever decided to pursue a master’s degree, I would do it in Europe - and in the fall of 2022 I was ready to make that dream a reality. I had a friend studying in Poland at the time, so I decided to start by looking at international relations programs in Poland and its neighboring countries. On a whim, I looked at the Czech Republic first and was reading about Masaryk’s IREP program when I came across the Conflict and Democracy Studies program. The title caught my eye and I clicked on it out of curiosity - and I was immediately hooked. I made myself research a few other programs, but I couldn’t get the CDS program out of my mind.

Fast forward a little less than a year and I’m sitting in my first week of lectures for my dream program. And my time studying in Brno has been even more enriching than I could have imagined. One of my favorite things is the diversity of the students in our program; we come from all over the world which makes our classroom debates very reflective of a wide variety of opinions and lived experiences, both personally and politically. Our courses provide plenty of space for this kind of discussion to take place during each lecture, allowing us to test and refine our ideas with both our professors and our fellow students. The assigned readings also offer a variety of perspectives - often introducing to completely opposing schools of thought - and the papers and projects we have throughout the semester push us to develop our own thoughts and opinions on these perspectives by applying them to current issues in world politics. After a year of studies, I can confidently say I made the right program choice and I’m looking forward to my second year of classes.