Global Week at UVA 2022

Emily Mellen holds the position of Global Communications Assistant in the University of Virginia Office of Global Affairs. She assists in social media engagement, global programming, and storytelling on all things global at UVA. She is also a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Music.

UVA faculty, staff, and students were thrilled to celebrate Global Week in person, or, at least, mostly in person this year.

There were several new programs and a return of the favorite Global Week tent in front of Hotel A. Cav Man and one of UVA’s favorite a capella groups, the Hullabahoos, came out to celebrate the start of the week followed by a mini–Global Fair with 15 units across Grounds sharing their information with UVA students. There were plenty of treats like popsicles from the beloved La Flor Michoacana in Fifeville and cookies from Bee Conscious in the Dairy Market. Students also had an opportunity to participate in trivia games and pin their international travels on a world map, and be entered for raffle prizes like UVA duffel bags, food truck vouchers, and tickets for the Virginia Film Festival. 

Hotel A was also the home base for a Global Studies program mixer and an annual Passport Drive, where 59 new passport applications were processed, including 27 covered by UVA Global-funded scholarships. Outside of Global Grounds, the fun continued with the VISAS & MOVE Global Café, bringing together UVA’s international community and volunteers and several programs for faculty and students dedicated to designing, participating in, and integrating study abroad experiences.

The Center for Global Health Equity hosted a global health symposium where CGHE scholars shared their research in poster presentations. The virtual symposium keynote featured UVA Medical School alumnus Pranay Sinha, MD, presenting on the role of undernutrition in tuberculosis patients and advocating for global action.

The closing events for Global Week featured a new collaboration between UVA Global and the Virginia Film Festival with two UVA Global-sponsored movies. The first film, Klondike, introduced by Vice Provost for Global Affairs, Ambassador Steve Mull, tells the heart-wrenching story of a Ukrainian family living on the border of Russia and Ukraine during the start of the Donbas war in 2014, foreshadowing the current Ukrainian realities. The second film, Saint Omer, is set in a small village in the North of France where visiting author Rama observes the trial of a Senegalese woman accused of infanticide.