Name: Lucía Vincent
Age: 33
High School: Instituto La Mennais
Degree: Bachelor’s Degree in International Studies
Year of Graduation: 1999
Occupation: Researcher and professor
Interview published in July 2009.
In 1995, Lucía began pursuing a Bachelor’s Degree in International Studies at ORT University. In 1996, she served as a research assistant on a project for the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the United Nations (UN). In 2001, she moved to Buenos Aires to pursue a Master’s degree in Journalism at Torcuato Di Tella University. She has lived in Argentina since 2005 and is currently working on completing her doctoral thesis on Politics and the Media in Argentina at the National University of San Martín.
When she finished high school, Lucía hadn’t decided what degree program to pursue. “I was always interested in different professions and didn’t know which one to choose.” When she inquired at ORT, she was drawn to the Bachelor’s Degree in International Studies because of its multidisciplinary approach. “The degree offered an interesting combination of history, politics, economics, and culture. It was an open-ended program that allowed me to envision various career paths,” she said. “What I value most about my time at ORT is the excellent faculty; I owe a great deal to some of my professors academically,” she noted.
Lucía believes the university has the necessary infrastructure. “There were no excuses for not studying.” She recalls that during her years of study, she formed a close-knit group of classmates. “Now, many years later, I still have a couple of very close friends.”
In 1996, while in her second year of college, thanks to the help of an ORT professor, she began working as a Research Assistant on an IDB and UN project to modernize the Legislative Branch. She later worked in the Graduate Coordination Office of the School of Administration and Social Sciences.
In 1999, “thanks to ORT,” she received a cultural exchange scholarship called “Ship for World Youth” awarded by the Japanese government and the United Nations University. It involved traveling for two months on a ship with 270 students from 14 countries. “It was a unique and unforgettable experience,” she recalled.
In 2001, she moved to Buenos Aires to pursue a Master’s degree in Journalism at Torcuato Di Tella University and the newspaper La Nación. In 2002, she was an editor in the economics section of La Nación. Upon returning to Uruguay, she worked as a producer of economic and international content for Radio El Espectador. In 2003, she served as an international news columnist for the MP news agency (Argentina).
She later worked at ORT University as Assistant Academic Coordinator for the Bachelor’s Degree in International Studies. “It was a role much more closely aligned with my interests: teaching, research, and academic administration.”
In 2005, she moved permanently to Argentina and began pursuing a Ph.D. in Political Science at the National University of San Martín. That same year, she also began working as Academic Coordinator of the Center for Latin American Studies, where she coordinated a Master’s program.
“Currently, thanks to a doctoral fellowship from CONICET (Argentina’s National Scientific and Technological Research Council), I am dedicated exclusively to finishing my doctoral thesis, in addition to teaching some classes on Contemporary Latin American History.”
“What I remember most about ORT are the people with whom I first studied and then worked—an excellent group of people whom I value very highly to this day,” she concluded.