Uplifting Nokma Matriarchs: Master of Arts in Global Policy Students Present Development Capstones
On Wednesday, December 10, 2025, the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies proudly hosted the Development Capstone seminar, the concluding project by the Master of Arts in Global Policy (MGP) students led by Rachel Brulé, Associate Professor of Global Development Policy. This year’s students were tasked to research and develop intervention programs which aimed to cultivate sustainable relationships between matriarchal Nokma leadership and the bureaucratic state in the Garo Hills, Meghalaya State, India. “Nokma” is a traditional title for a village leader in several Indigenous communities that oversees conflict resolution, preserves cultural traditions, manages community resources, and stewards the clan’s traditional land in collaboration with their people. However, since British colonization this power has largely been reduced and the women have been excluded from political discussions, leaving the integrity of the Garo institutions, land, and community unprotected from the powers of the state.
In efforts to re-center the power of the Nokmaship, each group’s presentation touched on their hypotheses on current barriers for re-centering women leaders, designs for surveys and methods of measurement to test these hypotheses, intervention components that address barriers, and explained their intervention materials that can be used in practice.
The first group to present under the title, Symbolic or Legitimized? Community and State-Level Support for Women Nokmas’ Legitimacy in the Village Employment Councils, Garo Hills, included students Breah Lyons, Wulan Karunia, Xinyi Zhou, Haochen Yang, and Yuhan Wang. They examined the institutional architecture of the local bureaucratic state, and the extent to which bureaucratic and legal structures either recognize or erode the traditional authority of Nokmas. They proposed several intervention trainings which touched on topics such as governance literacy, negotiation, mediation, communication and leadership skills, and mock village council meetings.
The second group, consisting of Jenna Landsman, Matey Babkin, Joy Mushabe, Ewura Yankah, and Simran Ashar, showcased Bargaining with the State: Advancing Women Nokmas’ Negotiating Power in Practice. They investigated the bargaining power of Nokmas, who sit at the juncture between state policy and community governance. They highlighted utilizing WhatsApp as a way to support coalition-building meetings, with a focus on rehearsal tools such as role-playing scenarios and facilitation through trainers. In addition to creating tools for the women to step into these roles, they anticipated backlash from their community’s men, offering separate mitigation sessions that will ensure a smooth transition of power.
Communal Stewardship in the Garo Hills: Recentering Women’s Authority in Ecological Governance wrapped up this series, presented by Logan Hall, Anna Trissa, Amaris Greene, MJ Taylor, and Zainab Kamara. Their research spotlit women as ecological stewards and recentered traditional Nokma power by nurturing confidence-building through agricultural work. They proposed facilitated conversations, collaborative exercises between women and land workers, and created seminars that exercise practical farming strategies. They included developing local partnerships, or “local champions”, who could bridge familiar and in-group conversations with community members to mitigate backlash from within and outside the communities.
Questions from audience members, in-person and over zoom, touched on considerations for spill-over effects – women and girls in other villages starting to feel empowered to take up leadership roles – and investigated the feasibility of these projects.
The MGP program immerses students in the fast-growing fields of global policymaking, implementation, and evaluation, preparing them for careers in government, international organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and the private sector. It is a rigorous three-term program that provides students with core training in essential methods of policy analysis, contextual knowledge regarding global institutions and politics, and in-depth understanding of challenges and opportunities in their chosen specialization. Currently, the program offers specializations in Environmental Policy, Developmental Policy, and International Public Health Policy.