Ashli Akins

Ashli is currently a PhD candidate at UBC's Liu Institute for Global Issues exploring the role of the arts in reclaiming voice for oppressed or marginalized populations and proposing alternative systemic policies that better protect community voices on an international level.

Until 2016, Ashli was the Executive Director of Mosqoy, an international charity that provides economic opportunities for marginalized highland communities of the Peruvian Andes, while nurturing their threatened Indigenous culture. She remains President of the Mosqoy Board of Directors and a graduate student in Mosqoy's Research & Advocacy department.

Environmental Studies is unique in that it understands the importance of experiential and interdisciplinary learning to effectively apply our academic knowledge to the real world. It also delves into some of the world's major problems, but with the intention of pushing its students to provide solutions.

Subsequent education: International Human Rights Law, MA (Oxford, 2014), PhD candidate (UBC, ongoing)