“Some of my best friends in school were international students,” said intern Jasmine Horsey. “I learned a lot about the world by talking to them.”

Jasmine Horsey in a Paris café

Name: Jasmine Horsey

Birth place: Farnborough, London, UK

Age: 22

Occupation: Student at Yale College (Connecticut, U.S.), majoring in English literature

Languages: English, French

Currently reading: “Empire,” by Niall Ferguson

Most memorable international experience: Helping to build a conservation center and gravity water feed system on the island of Borneo

How did you become interested in international affairs? 

“Some of my best friends in secondary school in Kent were international students. I found I learned a lot about the world simply by talking to them and hearing about their experiences growing up. The trend continued when I went to study in the U.S., when I was immersed from the beginning in a brilliant community of internationals.”

What international issue is of greatest interest to you today? Why?

“I am most interested in the admittedly broad field of human rights and especially race relations. Studying the civil rights movement in the U.S. at the same time as Ferguson reinforced that race relations is an ongoing and difficult narrative. A lot changed in the lifetimes of our parents, but much of that change was superficial, and it was certainly only in a concentrated area of the world. My studies as a literature student focus on the legacy of colonialism, including issues of race in urban settings.”