Amarins L. (IN A NUTSHELL)

Amarins Laanstra-Corn is a current sophomore at Stanford University studying International Relations with a focus on security and history. Her academic interests also include neuroscience, art history, psychology, and business. Previously she has held roles at the U.S. House of Representatives, Freedom House (a human rights and democracy NGO), the Lisbon Council (an EU-based economic think tank), and a cybersecurity and defense startup focusing on business development and growth strategy. Well at Stanford, Amarins additionally served as a research assistant for Professor James Fearon in the Center for International Security and Cooperation. There, she worked with data to understand, analyze, and dissect underlying trends of violence, particularly police brutality in Latin America and violence against women in western Africa. Beyond academics, Amarins has long been involved in the arts. Growing up, she studied various mediums of art practice and found herself wandering around museums and galleries for hours while her mother searched for her. She has assisted with curatorial work for local spaces, especially in collections that related to the intersection between activism and art. Recently, she was included in the student advisory group in the search for a new director and bettered practices for Stanford’s Cantor Museum. But most notably, Amarins has worked with Curious Cardinal students in dual art history and practice workshops on topics such as Jean Basquiat and Contemporary African American Art, Repetition and Motifs, and Self Portraits. Lastly, she loves to laugh and dance around kitchens, long walks on the beach, soccer (Go Chelsea!), autobiographies, reading the NYT, traveling with no specific destination in mind, learning about emergent technologies, advocating for women’s rights, going to basketball games, listening to her friends talk their startups, and filling her home with flowers.