Welcome to the Fries Center for Global Studies, Wesleyan’s hub for intercultural and multilingual engagement. Building on the decades of experience at Wesleyan with education abroad, international studies, and language education, the Fries Center was founded in 2015. In 2022, President Michael Roth issued a Presidential Statement on Internationalization that makes explicit what we mean by “internationalization” and sets forth a range of goals for the next five years. The Fries Center’s many inter-related functions and activities can be accessed via our main menu. We also maintain an active blog featuring activities and opportunities (see below) and send out a newsletter every other week with highlights from the blog. Subscribe to the Wes and the World Newsletter here.

Wesleyan and the World

Journey into Exile – Capturing Life Through the Lens of a Refugee

by Oleksandra Volakova As of September 2023, more than 114 million individuals were forcibly displaced worldwide, which is rapidly increasing. You and your friends have probably always lived in one place, leaving it mostly for traveling. Because of this, it is complicated to understand the daily hardships and problems refugee people face. Unless you will…

Celebrating and Embracing Diversity: Redefining Spanish Identity in the 21st Century

by Nataly Huyhua Earlier this week, on Monday, April 15th, a thought-provoking lecture titled “Spain is Not OnlyWhite: National Identity in the 21st Century” provided an exploration of Spain’s evolvingidentity in the modern era. Dr. Jeffrey Coleman’s lecture discussed Spain’s demographic shifts, particularly the profound impact ofmass migration since the 1990s. While Spain has long…
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