Walker Institute
Every semester, the Walker Institute hosts events to further engage students with their degree programs and introduce them to real-world applications while connecting them with the community
Palmetto Forum
The Palmetto Forum is a world affairs luncheon seminar designed to stimulate discussion of international issues within Columbia's professional community.
Area Studies Events
Each semester, our institute hosts events to further explore each of our six world regions with the USC community.
Conferences and Symposiums
The Institute sponsors occasional conferences to bring attention to international events and global issues.
Upcoming Events
Lina-Maria Murillo Book Talk- "Reproductive Justice in the US-Mexico Borderlands: Histories of Race and Resistance"
Lina-Maria Murillo’s first book, Fighting for Control: Power, Reproductive Care, and Race in the U.S-Mexico Borderlands (UNCP 2025), examines the histories of reproductive control and violence against Mexican-origin women and how they organized to create spaces of reproductive care and liberation throughout the twentieth century. Murillo’s latest article, “Espanta Cigüeñas: Race and Abortion in the U.S-Mexico Borderlands,” won the 2023 Catharine Stimpson Prize for Outstanding Feminist Scholarship in Signs: A Journal of Women and Culture in Society. Her research is supported by several grants and fellowships, including from the American Association of University Women (AAUW), American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and the Ford Foundation.
Speaker: Lina-Maria Murillo
Date: Thursday, September 24th
Time: 4:45pm-6:30pm
Location: Gambrell 429
Palmetto Forum "Convoy4Ukraine: A Columbian's Mission to the Front" with Jim Young
Jim Young traveled to Ukraine last February as one of only two Americans participating in an aid mission sponsored by a private British charity called Convoy4Ukraine. The charity organized 42 volunteers into teams of two to drive 21 pickup trucks and SUVs across northern Europe to Ukraine. They delivered medical equipment and supplies to civilian and military units across the country, coming within 60 miles of the front lines. Along the way, they also dropped off the vehicles themselves! This effort began immediately after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, born of a private individual’s moral outrage over the injustice of the attack.
After retiring from a long and varied career, including 10 years with Spartanburg, S.C.-based Tandematic, a worldwide exporter of proprietary textile machinery, Jim Young returned to school this fall at the age of 67 to pursue a master’s degree in history at the University of South Carolina. He continues to serve as a volunteer commissioner on Richland County Conservation Commission. Jim’s career included 19 years as a Montessori teacher and administrator, but he started out in journalism. He ended up as a business reporter at The State under the editorship of none other than Fred Monk! Jim holds a bachelor’s degree in Slavic Languages and Literature (Russian Studies) from the University of Virginia, which makes the situation in Ukraine hit him particularly hard.
Speaker: Jim Young
Date: Wednesday, September 30th
Time: 12:00pm-1:00pm
Location: The Palmetto Club: 1231 Sumter St. Columbia, SC 29201
THE NARROWING SEA: THREE PORTRAITS OF A REGION
Hannah Shepherd, Assistant Professor of History, Yale University, will discuss her new book, The Narrowing Sea: Fukuoka, Pusan, and the Rise and Fall of an Imperial Region (UC Press, 2025)
Speaker: Hannah Shepherd
Date: Thursday, October 8th
Time: 3:45pm-5:15pm
Location: Gambrell 428-429
Dr. Elana Resnick Book Talk- "Refusing Sustainability: Race and Environmentalism in a Changing Europe"
Sponsored by European Studies (Walker Institute) and the Department of Anthropology
Sustainability has become a touchstone for development worldwide, promising an antidote to environmental degradation and capitalism’s excess: waste. Refusing Sustainability offers a different account of both sustainability and waste by uncovering the intersections of international environmental reforms and racialized labor. In Bulgaria, Romani women comprise the bulk of the country’s waste workers, while anti-Roma racism casts them as socially disposable. Yet without their labor, the country cannot meet the sustainability targets required by the European Union. Drawing on twenty years of fieldwork—including eleven months working alongside Romani women street sweepers, and years embedded in waste organizations, political campaigns, Roma NGOs, and activist groups—this talk approaches Romani life-worlds as sites of creative production. In doing so, it illuminates broader dynamics of post-socialist racial capitalism, progressive environmentalism, democratic failures, mutual aid, and the power of women’s friendships.
Speaker: Dr. Elana Resnick
Date: Wednesday, October 21st
Time: 4:00pm-5:15pm
Location: Close-Hipp 464
China Shock 3.0: The New Geopolitics of Trade, Investment and Technology
Sponsored by the Walker Institute and the Folks Center for International Business
The Folks Center's Trade and Diplomacy series, featuring David Firestein, Nic Rogers and Victor Shih (panel discussion with audience Q&A)
China's rapid economic growth continues to produce “shocks” in manufacturing and trade that now include semiconductors, AI, and advanced technologies. This contest between Beijing and the West is reshaping trade policy, foreign investment, and security considerations, forcing governments and companies to rethink long-held strategies. This forum brings together leading scholars and policy practitioners to examine how China's strategic objectives are evolving, and how the U.S. and other countries are adapting and competing in response. Join us for a clear-eyed look at one of the defining issues shaping our world.
Speakers: David Firestein, Victor Shih, Nic Rogers
Date: Thursday, October 29th
Time: 4:30pm-6:30pm
Location: W.W. Hootie Johnson Performance Hall (Room 101) Darla Moore School of Business