What does it actually look like to study for a Master of Arts in International Affairs? At John Cabot University, graduate students explore international politics, human rights, security, diplomacy, and global institutions while learning alongside classmates from different countries and backgrounds.
For students considering a master's degree in international affairs, choosing a program is about more than the curriculum. The people you learn with, the perspectives you encounter, opportunities to connect theory with practice, and the environment in which you study can all shape your experience.
In this alumna perspective, Lilit Arshakyan, a graduate of JCU’s MA in International Affairs, reflects on her academic journey - from growing up in Armenia and developing an early interest in international politics to researching the liberal international order, studying security and strategic affairs in Brussels, completing an internship related to international law and human rights, and preparing for a future in diplomacy and academia.
Her experience offers a firsthand look at how graduate study in international affairs can connect academic inquiry, international perspectives, practical experience, and professional goals.
I was born and raised in Yerevan, Armenia, where I lived and studied until I was 13 years old. I then moved to Moscow, Russia, where I completed high school. After graduating, I returned to Armenia and pursued my bachelor’s degree at the American University of Armenia, majoring in English and Communications and minoring in Genocide Studies and Human Rights.
From a very young age, I was always curious about “how the world worked”, particularly from a political perspective. Being an Armenian and growing up in Armenia played a significant role in that. Armenia has lived through periods of conflict and political uncertainty, and politics has always had a very visible place in society. Political events, relations with larger powers, questions of security, national interests, and conflict were not some distant or abstract topics; they were part of everyday conversations.
Looking back, I even remember children discussing politics in playgrounds. My friends and I would sometimes talk about politics, about the role of major powers, their interests in different conflicts, and whether they contributed to resolving or creating problems before class in middle school. At the time, these conversations felt completely normal and just a part of everyday life, but now looking back, I realize how much they shaped my curiosity about international affairs.
I was always asking questions about why states behaved in certain ways, how political systems worked, how national interests shaped foreign policy, how the money printing worked or how the bank interest rates were set. I would often have long conversations with my dad about these questions. Of course, those conversations also played an important role in developing my interest in the field.
These interests eventually led me to pursue my bachelor’s degree at the American University of Armenia, where I majored in English and Communications and minored in Genocide Studies and Human Rights. One of the things I valued most about AUA was the opportunity to explore courses across different disciplines. I was able to study subjects related to politics, law, philosophy, human rights, and international affairs, which broadened my worldview and helped me better understand which questions I wanted to explore more deeply.
Over time, those interests became increasingly focused on international relations, conflict, human rights, peace and security, and the role of states and international institutions. That ultimately led me to pursue a master’s degree in International Affairs at John Cabot University.
JCU’s multicultural environment was one of the best parts of my experience there. Studying International Affairs alongside people from different countries meant that many of the issues we discussed in class were not simply theoretical. Students often brought their own national, cultural, and personal experiences into conversations about conflict, security, political systems, human rights, or relations between states. The same international event could be understood very differently depending on where someone came from, and hearing those different interpretations made the discussions much more meaningful, interesting, and eye-opening.
It also taught me to question some of my own assumptions. Coming from Armenia, I naturally tend to think about international affairs partly from the perspective of a small state and through the experiences of my own region. At JCU, I was constantly exposed to perspectives shaped by completely different political systems, regions, and historical experiences.
Being multilingual has always given me a way to access different cultures, ways of thinking, and sources of information. At JCU, that multicultural and multilingual environment felt very natural.
One of the things I loved and valued the most about my time at JCU was the academic environment as a whole. I genuinely enjoyed all of my classes and the discussions that came with them. That was thanks not only to the professors and the subjects we were studying, but also to our cohort. We had an amazing group of people with very different backgrounds, experiences, and worldviews, and we were able to debate, challenge one another, express our perspectives freely, and learn from each other. For me, that was one of the most inspiring parts of the program.
I have always loved studying and being in an academic environment, particularly the conversations that happen around what you are learning. I enjoy asking questions, hearing opposing perspectives, and sometimes leaving a discussion with more questions than I had when it started. At JCU, I felt that we had the space to do exactly that.
I would especially mention Professor Michael Driessen, and Professor Simone Tholens, who were also my thesis readers, and Professor Lyal Sunga. My discussions with them, whether during their classes or in conversations outside the classroom, were particularly valuable to me. Their classes were thought-provoking and often pushed me to look at questions from perspectives I had not considered before. They created the kind of environment where you could explore an idea, question it, defend your position, change your mind, and continue developing intellectually.
For me, those experiences represent academia at its best. It is not simply about receiving information from a professor; it is about having the opportunity to think openly, exchange ideas with professors and classmates, encounter different worldviews, and grow through those conversations. That is probably what I will remember most about my classes at JCU.
I always knew that I was especially interested in political philosophy, international systems, liberal international order, and the broader ideas that shape the way we understand world politics. When I started thinking about my thesis, I knew that I wanted to find a way to bring those interests together rather than focus only on one particular institution, conflict, or policy.
As I was reading about the crisis of the liberal international order, I noticed that much of the literature explained it through factors such as changing power dynamics, democratic backsliding, populism, geopolitical competition, or failures in institutional and policy design. Those explanations were very important, but I became increasingly interested in asking a different question: what if some of these problems are not the underlying cause of the crisis, but symptoms of something deeper?
That was really the starting point of my thesis. When I encountered Oswald Spengler’s theory of civilizational decline, I became interested in his idea that political and cultural systems can move through different stages of development and eventually enter a period of exhaustion. I started wondering whether the difficulties we see within the liberal international order could be understood not only as separate policy failures, but as part of a broader historical or civilizational process. I did not use the theory to predict that the system was going to collapse; rather, I wanted to see whether it could offer a different way of interpreting what was already happening.
From there, the process became about finding a way to connect a very broad philosophical idea to international relations in a structured and academically useful way. Armenia’s experience after the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war eventually became the case through which I explored some of these questions, but for me the thesis was always about something larger than one case. It was about asking how international systems change, why institutions can continue to exist while becoming less effective, and whether the gap between principles and practice can sometimes tell us something deeper about the condition of an international order.
What I enjoyed most about the process was that it allowed me to combine several areas that had interested me throughout my studies—political philosophy, international relations theory, institutions, human rights, and questions of power.
Spending the summer in Brussels with the Global Governance Institute through the Global Peace, Security, and Strategic Studies program was one of the most valuable parts of my academic experience. It gave me the opportunity to meet and learn directly from professionals in the field who had practical experience in areas related to international security, policy, diplomacy, and strategic studies.
One of the aspects I found especially interesting was that some of the subjects were quite new to me. My academic background had been more focused on international affairs, political theory, human rights, and state relations, so the more military and strategic side of the program opened up a new perspective. We explored topics such as military strategy, hybrid warfare, counterinsurgency, cybersecurity, and the role of emerging technologies in conflict, which allowed me to engage with areas I had not previously studied in as much depth.
We also had the opportunity to visit NATO Headquarters and speak directly with professionals working in the field. For me, this was one of the most valuable parts of the program. I think academic environments like this are especially important for people who want to build a career in international affairs because they create a space where you can have conversations that would otherwise be very difficult to have.
You can study theories, policies, conflicts, and institutions through books and academic articles, but there are certain questions that are best answered by people who actually work with these issues every day. In an academic setting, you have the opportunity to ask more direct and sometimes difficult questions about how things really work, how policies are actually implemented, what limitations professionals encounter, and what happens when theoretical ideas have to be translated into practice.
That is something I value greatly about programs like GPSSS. They create a space where students can have open and serious conversations with people who are directly involved in the field and who have seen the practical consequences of policy decisions. For someone like me, who wants to continue professionally in international affairs, that kind of access and exchange is extremely valuable.
Overall, the Brussels experience not only expanded my academic interests, particularly toward security and strategic studies, but also reinforced how important it is to connect theoretical knowledge with the experiences of professionals who are actually working within these institutions and dealing with the realities of international politics.
My minor in Genocide Studies and Human Rights had a significant influence on what I was looking for when I decided to pursue graduate studies in International Affairs. It gave me an early opportunity to think more seriously about questions of human rights, mass violence, state responsibility, memory, justice, and the role of international institutions. It also made me interested in understanding not only why these violations happen, but also what mechanisms exist to prevent them, respond to them, and hold states accountable.
JCU helped me develop those interests by giving me the opportunity to approach them from multiple perspectives. Through courses and seminars, I was able to examine questions of conflict, international institutions, political theory, security, and diplomacy, which helped me better understand the political context in which human rights norms operate. It became increasingly clear to me that human rights cannot always be understood separately from questions of power, national interest, and international politics.
The program also encouraged me to think more critically about the difference between international norms in theory and their implementation in practice. That became especially important in my later academic work and also connected closely to my internship, where I was able to observe how international human rights obligations are implemented at the domestic level.
In that sense, my minor gave me the initial interest and foundation, while JCU allowed me to broaden that interest and examine human rights as part of a much larger political and international framework.
At JCU, in class, we were studying ideas such as foreign policy, international institutions, security, human rights, diplomacy, the way states make decisions, and more, but the opportunities to engage with practitioners and policymakers through those seminars gave those discussions a very different dimension.
Speaking with people who actually work within international institutions or in policymaking helped me understand the gap that can sometimes exist between theory and practice. In the classroom, we often analyze how institutions are designed to function, what their mandates are, or how certain policies should work. Practitioners, however, can explain what happens when those ideas meet political realities, institutional limitations, competing interests, and the practical constraints of decision-making.
For me, these seminars were an important bridge between academic study and the professional world. They complemented what I was learning in the classroom and made me much more interested in gaining practical experience myself.
During my master’s studies, I had the opportunity to intern at the Office of the Representative on International Legal Matters of the Republic of Armenia. The Office is responsible for representing Armenia before international courts and in international arbitration proceedings, and I worked specifically with the department responsible for the execution of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights.
This was an important and interesting experience for me because, up until that point, much of my academic work had focused on international relations between states, foreign policy, international relations theory, political philosophy, and the way states interact with one another in the international system. The internship gave me the opportunity to look at international affairs from a very different perspective and understand what happens within the state itself.
I was able to see more closely how different domestic institutions communicate and cooperate with one another, how international obligations and standards are translated into practice, and how complex that process can sometimes be. A judgment or an international standard may appear very clear on paper, but its implementation can require discussions, coordination between different institutions, legal and administrative changes, and the resolution of practical challenges along the way.
It was very interesting to see this connection between the international and domestic levels. There is an entire internal process behind fulfilling international obligations, and that process involves both institutional cooperation and significant challenges.
The internship gave me an opportunity to better understand and to see for myself how the internal mechanisms through which international law and international standards are actually implemented.
Now I want to continue developing professionally in the field of international affairs and diplomacy. I have recently been accepted to the Diplomatic School of Armenia under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and I hope that after completing the program, I may have the opportunity to work at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and potentially pursue a career as a diplomat.
The idea of representing my country and working directly with foreign policy, diplomacy, and international relations is something that strongly interests me. I would like to gain practical experience in the field and better understand diplomacy not only from an academic perspective, but also through the realities of negotiation, representation, and policymaking.
At the same time, my long-term goal is also connected to academia. I would eventually like to teach at the university level and become a professor. I genuinely enjoy studying, discussing political theory and international affairs, and being part of an academic environment. I would like to continue learning throughout my career and, later on, share that knowledge and experience with students.
Ideally, I would like these two paths to complement each other. Having professional experience in diplomacy and public service would, I think, make me a better academic and professor, because I would be able to bring practical experience into the classroom rather than approaching international affairs only from a theoretical perspective. In the long term, I hope to continue developing in political theory, international affairs, and diplomacy, while contributing both through professional work and through teaching.
Lilit’s experience illustrates how an MA in International Affairs can connect academic study with international perspectives, practical experiences, and professional aspirations. During her time at John Cabot University, she explored international politics, human rights, security, diplomacy, and political theory while learning alongside students from diverse backgrounds.
The program combines advanced study of global politics with opportunities to engage with practitioners, explore complex international issues, and connect academic theory with the realities of international policy and practice. Small classes provide opportunities for discussion and close interaction with professors, while experiential opportunities can help students develop a broader understanding of international affairs beyond the classroom.
For Lilit, these experiences became part of a broader path toward diplomacy and academia. Her journey from Armenia to Rome, and from graduate study to professional experiences in international affairs, offers one example of how students can use the MA program to explore their interests and prepare for different paths within the field.
What is the MA in International Affairs at John Cabot University? The MA in International Affairs at John Cabot University is a graduate program designed to provide advanced knowledge and skills in international affairs, with areas of study including international politics and human rights. Students study in Rome within a small, internationally diverse academic community.
What can you study in an MA in International Affairs? The field of international affairs can encompass subjects such as international politics, human rights, international institutions, diplomacy, security, and global challenges. At JCU, the program combines foundational concepts with opportunities to develop expertise in critical areas of international affairs.
What careers can you pursue with a master's degree in International Affairs? Graduates of JCU's MA in International Affairs pursue opportunities in areas including government, international organizations, nonprofits, international consulting, business, finance, legal firms, and public service. The program's knowledge and skills can also support careers related to global policy and international affairs.
What is the learning environment like at JCU? JCU's MA in International Affairs is taught in small classes, creating opportunities for students to engage closely with professors and classmates. The international community also brings together students with different national, cultural, and academic perspectives.
Why study International Affairs in Rome? Rome is a major center for policymaking and international organizations, connecting Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic. Studying International Affairs in Rome gives students the opportunity to examine global affairs from a city with an international political and institutional environment.
Ready to learn more? Explore our MA in International Affairs program or connect with JCU Admissions by joining an online information session, scheduling a campus tour, or speaking with a JCU Admissions Counselor. You can also email us at graduateadmissions@johncabot.edu.