Christian Haig receives 2017 Herbert Scoville Jr. Peace Fellowship

Recent UNC-Chapel Hill graduate, Christian Haig has been awarded a Herbert Scoville Jr. Peace Fellowship for the fall 2017 semester. He will spend six to nine months working with the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, DC.

Christian is one of five Fall 2017 Scoville Fellows chosen from among 242 applicants who graduated from 165 universities in 38 states. The fall fellows will bring the total number of Scoville Peace Fellows to 176 since the program’s inception.

Christian will work in the Energy and Climate programs with Dr. Matthew McKinzie, Dale Bryk, and Ashok Gupta. His expected tasks include conducting research, writing, and environmental advocacy on the nexus of issues around the U.S. military, renewable energy and, climate change, and national security. The U.S. Department of Defense is the largest consumer of energy in the federal government, has made great strides on energy efficiency and wind and solar generation, and has taken concrete steps to address the implications of global warming for the military mission. Haig received a double BA in Political Science and Peace, War, and Defense from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in May 2017. He graduated with Highest Distinction, Honors in Political Science, and as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Having spent over 20 summers north of the Arctic Circle, he has a keen interest in circumpolar issues. He has pursued faculty-advised research projects on Arctic geopolitics, and he researched energy development in Arctic Russia as an intern for the U.S. Department of State and interned for the Institute for Sustainable Communities. With that knowledge, he designed and taught a course to undergraduate students at UNC on the Arctic covering topics such as sustainable development and security issues. His Honors thesis analyzed Russia’s economic dependency on energy extraction, its future energy prospects, and the subsequent role of technology transfers from NATO countries as mechanisms promoting Russian cooperative foreign policy in the High North. Haig has studied at the University of Oslo and the University of Tallinn in Estonia and has French, Russian, and Norwegian language skills. At UNC, he served on the executive board of the Carolina International Relations Association for four years and founded and served as the editor-in-chief of The Internationalist undergraduate research journal on global issues. He helped organize Model United Nations conferences, an international conference engaging youth in Arctic issues, and the Foreign Policy Association’s Great Decisions foreign policy education programs at UNC. Additionally, Christian has been engaged on social issues including LGBT activism and directing organizational development at the Campus Y, a center for 30 student organizations promoting social innovation and justice. He is also an artist, having sculptures installed around UNC’s campus and having served as president of Saint Anthony Hall literary and arts society. He is from Fort Lauderdale, FL and spent summers in Tromsø, Norway.

Learn more about the Scoville Fellowship here.

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