Looking to increase your ability to think critically, build a strong community with your peers and work to change your life and the world around you? Then the online STAND Global Issues courses are for you! 
Social change, and a better world, happens when a mere 25% of people get behind an idea. Figuring out how to get involved can be challenging. Our certified courses provide an excellent starting point. 
The Global Issues courses will deepen your understanding of social justice issues through a series of six online evening sessions plus one in-person session with expert facilitators. All students, no matter your major, are invited to join in.
As a Global Issues courses participant, you have the opportunity to meet other students, attend interactive workshops, talk about the issues you care about, and have new experiences through reflection, debate, and action.

Applications for the 2024 spring Global Issues courses are now closed. Interested in participating in our next Global Issues series?

Participants experiences

“I now can examine complex issues and evaluate different perspectives and solutions. Most importantly, I have developed a sense of global citizenship and responsibility, which has encouraged me to engage with global issues and become an active agent of change in my community.” – Siddhanth, 2023 participant.
“The connections made within the group, excellent facilitation and well-chosen activities created a space where everyone opened up to explore subjects in an honest and safe way” – Michelle, 2023 participant. 
“This course exceeded my expectations. I expected to learn a lot, which I did, but I didn’t expect the level of inspiration that would stem from each session. Each week, I left feeling motivated. Despite the exploration of challenging topics like migration, climate change and various global issues, ways on how to make change were depicted through really engaging methods, making it easier to digest new information and understand new concepts.” – Chloe, 2023 participant. 

Who are the 2024 facilitators?

Vicky Donnelly: Vicky works in Global Education and anti-racism programs, with schools, colleges, service-providers, and youth and community groups around Ireland. As an outreach and education worker with Financial Justice Ireland and Green Schools, she supports learners to explore and question dominant narratives about growth and ‘development’, as well as looking at root causes of global poverty, including unfair trade, debt and tax systems drives inequalities and environmental harm.
Adedotun Adekeye: Ade is a Nigerian that has been living in Ireland for over 16 years. He has been working in the Development Education sector as a Facilitator for over 14 years. A seasonal feature writer for 80:20 Educating and Acting for a Better World. As a poet, he was a featured reader at Over the Edge in Galway twice and had a poem published in the first edition of Skylight 47 (Galway Poetry Magazine). He is a Drama facilitator: skilled in Forum Theatre methodology and a Storyteller. A Galway “blow-in”, an engineer by profession and a trained translator, a man of many hats!
Jen Harris: Jen is the founder and CEO for the Waterford Sustainable Living Initiative (SLí), a development education organisation operating in the South East of Ireland, and also serves as a supervisor for the Professional Masters In Education programme for the University of Galway and Hibernia College. Ms. Harris holds an MA in Education and an MA in Development as well as a Post Grad in Innovation and Enterprise Development. Jen’s work focuses on responsible consumption and sustainability and how they intersect with climate change.
Fiammetta Bonfigli: Fiammetta is a Professor and Researcher with international experience in the field of Sociology of Law, State Crimes and Transitional Justice, Law and Social Movements. Ph.D. thesis in Sociology of Law defended in 2014 at the “Cesare Beccaria” Department of the Università degli Studi di Milano (Italy). Master’s degree at the International Institute for the Sociology of Law of Oñati, Spain (2011). Currently, she holds a position as a post-doc researcher at the Department of Legal and Constitutional History of the University of Vienna (Austria), where she also teaches courses on Transitional justice, Legal Sociology and Legal Anthropology, and Social Movements and the Law. 
Shane Murphy: A postdoc researcher currently working in Dublin City University and Maynooth University, covering topics such as extremism, conspiracy theories, and online radicalisation. His work has focused on communities such as Incels and the Far Right in Ireland, often employing an engaged approach that involves reaching out to members of these communities, in order to better understand their ideologies, and the processes through which they come to hold extreme beliefs.
Caoimhe Butterly: Caoimhe is an educator, psychosocial support worker, documentary maker and an Irish peace activist who has worked with social movements and community projects in Mexico, Guatemala, Haiti, Ukraine, Syria, Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon for over 20 years. She has spent the past number of years working with refugee and migrant communities in Calais, the Balkans and Greece. Active with anti-racism and migrant justice organising in Ireland, she uses documentary film-making as a medium for witness and advocacy.