Portraits

Fitiavana Andry from Madagascar wants to play a part in her country's future. Fitiavana belongs to the first cohort of Sciences Po - MasterCard Foundation scholars, a programme that supports committed students from Africa.

Evangeline Larsen was born and raised in Australia. Last year, after completing high school at Oxley College in Burradoo, New South Wales, she began the Sciences Po-University of Sydney dual BA programme.

Romaric Compaoré comes from Burkina Faso and is working on a project to facilitate access to water in his village. Romaric is part of the first cohort of Sciences Po - MasterCard Foundation Scholars, a programme to educate and support bright young African students with a personal commitment to changing the world around them.

After two years studying on the Reims campus, Lukas Noah Drammeh travelled to the United States where he is currently spending his third year at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Not only is this giving him the opportunity to further his knowledge of sociology and African-American studies, he's also achieving a long-standing dream: to join a well-known basketball team and play a season on American soil. Video portrait of a basketball fan.

On 22 November at Sciences Po, University of St.Gallen professor Omid Aschari gave a Master Class on effective leadership for a responsible future to students from the School of Management and Innovation. Professor Aschari teaches the University of St.Gallen’s flagship Master of Strategy and International Management programme. Related links

Marco Hazan, a Master of Marketing and Market Research student at Sciences Po, is also the creator of the successful photographic series Humans of Paris, inspired by Humans of New York.

When Léa Moukanas found she had been admitted to the London School of Economics and to Sciences Po, she chose to remain in France so she could continue her non-profit work here. We talked to Léa, the youngest president of a charitable organisation in Europe, about her commitment. This interview is the fourth in our 2017 #FirstYearsScPo series.

Imagine being a well-behaved young foreign woman far from her family in Paris in May '68. Imagine being any young woman at Sciences Po in the late 1960s, where the 25 percent of female students had to struggle to achieve more than the graduate destination expected of them: marriage. That was Rula Ghani 47 years ago. Today, she is the first First Lady of Afghanistan to have a public profile; an example and source of hope for Afghan women. “I learned to adapt”, she modestly comments. We looked back on the student years of this exceptional alumna, who gave a guest lecture at Sciences Po on Friday, October 13.

“I was eighteen years old, I was just starting at Sciences Po and I was left-wing because, given what I was and what I was reading, I didn’t see how I could have been otherwise*.” The year is 1989. Édouard Philippe had “only just” passed the Sciences Po entrance exam after a year of literary classe préparatoire. It was the start of three “dream years” for him on the university’s Paris campus.

Following an agreement between Sciences Po and the Inlaks Foundation in October 2015, a recipient of the prestigious Indian scholarship will attend Sciences Po this fall for the first time. Neha Vijay Nair, Senior Security Consultant at Kawach Media & Databases, will pursue a Master in Advanced Global Studies & International Security. Find out more about her story below.

Lukáš Macek, the energetic Czech director of the Dijon campus, which focuses on Central and Eastern Europe, has seen the institution grow with—or despite—the contrary winds blowing across the continent.

Originally from Vancouver, Zak Vescera is pursuing the dual degree between the University of British Columbia (UBC) and Sciences Po. He has completed two years at the Reims campus, where he studied European and American relations, and will matriculate to UBC in the fall, where he intends to major in International Relations, with a speciality in security, and minor in French.

Uddeshya Nigam, who comes from India, will attend the Sciences Po Campus of Le Havre this fall, where he will pursue the Europe-Asia programme. The third in our 2017 #FirstYearsScPo. Read the interview below.

The courses offered on the Menton campus focus on the Middle East and Mediterranean Basin countries. Intercultural dialogue and interreligious debate are an important part of campus life, largely thanks to Bernard El Ghoul, the director of the campus, who fosters the common values of tolerance and living together among a student community of diverse backgrounds and origins. Portrait of an esteemed director, whom students affectionately call the "Lebanese Di Caprio."

Hugo Givernaud has always been passionate about American sports, especially basketball. He took advantage of his undergraduate year abroad to realise his childhood dream: he interned as a sports journalist and interviewed some of the NBA’s top stars.

Malak Gadalla, who comes from Egypt, will matriculate to the Sciences Po Campus of Menton in the fall, where she will pursue the Europe-Middle East programme. The second in our 2017 #FirstYearsScPo series. Read the interview below.

In over ten years as director of the Nancy campus, François Laval has certainly made his mark. Perhaps this is because he's always available, always active and always concerned about students' personal and academic development.

Florent Bonaventure, director of the Le Havre campus since 2013, is as fascinated by Asia as his students in the Europe-Asia programme. This committed, enthusiastic 36-year old history lecturer does his utmost to ensure his students can have a fulfilling student life as well as a first-class education.

Sciences Po alumnus Sunghan Kim has recently been named on the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list. In his role as principal product owner at Coupang—the world's fastest growing e-commerce site, known as the "Amazon" of South Korea—he has developed a fraud detection system to identify reviewers not associated with sellers. Alongside Coupang’s founder, Sunghan Kim has helped turn the platform into a multi-billion-dollar enterprise within four years. Interview.

Romasha comes from Calcutta, Alleiah from Ahmedabad and Akhil from Hindupur. All three are outstanding students who could not have come to study in France or at Sciences Po without the various types of financial aid they receive. In this video, they talk about their life in France and their plans for the future.