u/bruhboy1234567890

Hey everyone :) I’m thinking of creating a hitchhiking club at Nova and wanted to see if anyone would be interested.

During my undergrad in Utrecht, we had the sickest hitchhiking club people hitchhiked from Utrecht to places like Valencia, Split, Lithuania, Warsaw, Budapest, etc. It was such a fun way to travel, meet people, and make random adventures happen on a student budget.

I’d love to try and recreate something similar here in Lisbon. Has anyone here hitchhiked before? Or would anyone be interested in helping organize a club / first trip?

Comment or message me if this sounds like your kind of fun!

I’m finishing my liberal arts thesis and I feel empty rather than proud. It took me much longer than expected, I don’t think I chose the right supervisor for my topic, and I feel like I never got the guidance I needed to turn the project into the kind of work I imagined. Now I’m looking at the draft and it feels like an approximation of a thesis rather than a proper contribution: the concepts feel messy, the argument feels stitched together, and I’m not sure the evidence carries the claims as strongly as it should.

Has anyone else finished a thesis feeling like it was more of a survival project than a real academic achievement? How did you make peace with submitting work that felt far below what you wanted it to be?

Hey everyone,

I am in the final stretch of my Bachelor thesis, and the 2-week deadline panic is officially setting in. I have a solid draft, but I am staring at it too closely and desperately need an outside perspective on my structure, flow, and theoretical integration.

I am feeling good about the empirical data, but I have a few specific dilemmas keeping me up at night.

If anyone has expertise in Securitization Theory, Critical Security Studies, or Southern African geopolitics, I would love your brutal honesty. Please send me a message any advice helps

Thanks in advance

Hey everyone!

Me and some friends have a bunch of floaties/inflatable tubes and we want to do a chill river float somewhere around Utrecht... basically get in at one point and see how far we can float along the longest continuous route possible.

Does anyone know a good river/canal route for this? Ideally somewhere safe, with a decent current, no annoying locks/boat traffic, and easy spots to get in and out.

Any recommendations for starting points, routes, or things to watch out for would be super appreciated!

Hi everyone! I’ll be starting the International Development & Public Policy master’s at Nova SBE and I’m currently looking for housing.

I’d love to live somewhere with a lot of international students / master’s students, ideally a social place where it’s easy to meet people. I don’t mind sharing common spaces with others, but I’d prefer to have my own room.

Does anyone have recommendations for residences, shared flats, areas to look in, or places to avoid? Any advice would be super appreciated :)

Hey everyone,

I’m currently writing my undergrad thesis on the Mozambican state’s response to the Cabo Delgado insurgency and honestly I feel a bit stuck and overwhelmed by the amount of material.

The thesis looks at state discourse/rhetoric vs actual counterinsurgency practice over time, using speeches, human rights reports, ACLED data, media sources, etc.

I feel like I’m drowning in content and struggling to structure the argument/methodology properly. Would really love to speak to someone who has written a similar thesis (especially on securitization, insurgencies, African politics, discourse analysis, or qualitative IR research).

If anyone would be open to a short call/chat sometime I’d massively appreciate it. Thanks 😄

Hi everyone,

I was recently admitted to the Master’s in International Development & Public Policy at NOVA SBE and I’d love to hear honest experiences from current students/alumni.

I’m especially interested in Lusophone Africa, development policy, and potentially working in Mozambique in the future, so the programme seems very aligned with my interests.

How have people found:

• the academic quality,
• career opportunities/network,
• student environment,
• and the programme’s real connection to development work in practice?

Would really appreciate any insight before making my decision 😄

Hey everyone,

I’m currently deciding between two master’s programs and honestly feeling pretty torn.

I got into the Public Policy program at Hertie in berlin and also into the Master’s in International Development & Public Policy at NOVA in Lisbon.

Hertie seems more internationally prestigious/competitive and would actually be cheaper for me, but NOVA feels much more connected to the Lusophone Africa/development world, especially Mozambique, which is an area I’d really like to work in long term.

Was wondering if anyone here has thoughts on:

• Hertie vs NOVA reputationally
• career prospects in policy/development
• whether specialization in Lusophone Africa is actually valuable
• or just generally which you’d choose and why

Would really appreciate any insight!!!