As Perry World House celebrates ten years, our 2025–26 Year in Review highlights how our four pillars of climate, democracy, global justice and human rights, and security brought the world to Penn and Penn to the world during a year of global upheaval.
On April 22, 2026, Perry World House convened a conference to identify and analyze the ways gender and women’s rights shape the global struggle between democracy and autocracy. The goal of the conference was to better understand how gender “works” alongside and against authoritarianism and to shed light on the strategies, tactics, and narratives that strengthen democratic forces. The…
On Thursday, April 9, Perry World House convened a workshop titled “Financing Resilience for Ocean Economies.” It brought together policymakers, practitioners, and academics with participants hearing a range of perspectives from Australia, Barbados, Costa Rica, India, Maldives, Palau, and Seychelles, as well as the International Monetary Fund, InterAmerican Development Bank, United Nations University, United Nations…
On March 25th, Sasha Nicholas attended the “Making AI Work for the People” panel hosted by Georgetown University’s Initiative on Artificial Intelligence and Democratic Citizenship (AIDC) and the Georgetown Democracy Initiative. The recent discourse from many universities about technology and ethics and governance were front and center at the popular Tech & Society week.
Celeste Wallander, Executive Director of Penn Washington, reflects and joins a cohort of 18 Perry World House undergraduate student fellows traveled to Geneva during their 2026 spring break to meet some of those heroes who have helped to create a global system that has enabled us to escape that cycle of human suffering. PWH student fellows…
On November 20, 2025, Perry World House, with the support of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, held a workshop that convened leading democracy scholars and researchers to identify the key elements of a “democratic playbook.” How do resilient democracies push back against authoritarian and non-democratic populist movements? Democratic backsliding in the 21st century is…
On February 12, 2026, Bangladeshis went to the polls in the first general election since the July 2024 uprising that overthrew Sheikh Hasina. Perry World House Postdoctoral Fellow Muhib Rahman answered questions about the election’s outcomes and what opportunities and challenges now face the new government. Perry World House: When a student-led movement forced Sheikh Hasina’s resignation in…
Perry World House returned to the Munich Security Conference by hosting its second side event on February 13, 2026. After hosting its first side event in 2025, PWH built on its previous success by convening over 20 leading foreign affairs and national security practitioners and academics. At PWH’s side event, World House Faculty Director and…
On February 8, Japanese voters will head to the polls for their third national election in fifteen months. This is unusual even by Japanese standards, where national elections are held more frequently than in other democracies. In addition, Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae, the first female prime minister in the entire history of Japanese modern politics,…
On January 20 and 21, 2026 Perry World House hosted a conference, bringing together scholars and practitioners to discuss the future of global development assistance. Given the shuttering of USAID and the decline of official development assistance, we convened experts to reflect on the successes and challenges of nearly a century of Official Development Assistance.…
