ANA LAURA THOMAT
Program Associate
Orfalea Center for Global & International Studies
Robertson Gym, Room 1007
Email: a.thomat@orfaleacenter.ucsb.edu

 

Ana Laura Thomat has been globalizing her life ever since she decided to leave the vibrant city of Berlin for the opportunity to study in Sydney, Australia at the age of twenty. After four years down under, Ana received a Bachelor of Science in psychology and a Bachelor of Commerce in international business from the University of New South Wales.

Although the possibility of staying in Australia was tempting, Ana decided to move again to pursue another adventure, this time back in her old European home. In Leipzig a brand-new, EU-sponsored Masters program in global studies caught her attention as she was seeking to merge her research interests in psychology, economics, foreign politics, and philosophy in a single academic program. In Leipzig she also worked with the political/economic officer at the U.S. consulate on a project analyzing progressive solutions to the rising unemployment problem in eastern Germany, where she learned that the German understanding of capitalism and its obligations to society differ from the American approach. It was then that Ana began to formulate a concept for her final major research project.

In August 2007 Ana went as an Erasmus exchange student to the University of California, Santa Barbara where she got involved in a project on religion and global development. In March 2008 she moved to Vienna, Austria, her final destination in the European Masters program, where she wrote a thesis arguing for an understanding of capitalism as a cultural system that reflects beliefs, value-systems and identities. The thesis for which Ana earned the highest marks examined Turkey - a country with secular and religiously inspired approaches to capitalism. On completion of the Masters she moved back to Santa Barbara to work for the Orfalea Center for Global & International Studies.