Recent University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill graduate Christian Haig has been awarded a Herbert Scoville Jr. Peace Fellowship for the Fall 2017 semester. Haig will spend six to nine months working with the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, D.C.

Christian is one of five Fall 2017 Scoville Peace Fellows chosen from among 242 applicants who graduated from 165 universities in 38 states. The fall fellows will bring the total number of Scoville Peace Fellows to 176 since the program’s inception.

Christian will work in the energy and climate programs with Matthew McKinzie, Dale Bryk and Ashok Gupta. His expected tasks include conducting research, writing and environmental advocacy on the nexus of issues around the U.S. military, renewable energy and, climate change and national security.

The U.S. Department of Defense is the largest consumer of energy in the federal government. The department has made great strides on energy efficiency and wind and solar generation and taken concrete steps to address the implications of global warming for the military mission.

Haig majored in political science and peace, war and defense from UNC in May 2017. He graduated with highest distinction honors in political science and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

Haig has spent over 20 summers north of the Arctic Circle and has a keen interest in circumpolar issues. He has pursued faculty-advised research projects on Arctic geopolitics, researched energy development in Arctic Russia as an intern for the U.S. Department of State and interned for the Institute for Sustainable Communities. With that knowledge, he designed and taught a course to undergraduate students at UNC on the Arctic covering topics such as sustainable development and security issues.

His honors thesis analyzed Russia’s economic dependency on energy extraction, its future energy prospects, and the subsequent role of technology transfers from NATO countries as mechanisms promoting Russian cooperative foreign policy in the High North.

Haig has studied at the University of Oslo and the University of Tallinn in Estonia and has French, Russian and Norwegian language skills. At UNC, he served on the executive board of the Carolina International Relations Association for four years and founded and served as the editor-in-chief of The Internationalist undergraduate research journal on global issues. He helped organize Model United Nations conferences, an international conference engaging youth in Arctic issues, and the Foreign Policy Association’s Great Decisions foreign policy education programs at UNC.

Additionally, Christian has been engaged with social issues, including LGBT activism and organizational development at the Campus Y. He is also an artist. His sculptures have been installed on UNC’s campus, and he served as president of Saint Anthony Hall literary and arts society. He is from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and spent summers in Tromsø, Norway.

Learn more about the Scoville Fellowship online.

Learn about other nationally-competitive and prestigious awards from the Office of Distinguished Scholarships (ODS), and follow ODS on Twitter: @ODS_UNCCH.