KU News Release

LAWRENCE — Katherine M. Beall, a University of Kansas senior from Baldwin City, has been selected for a prestigious internship at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in the Hague, Netherlands.

She will work Aug. 16-Dec. 23 in the Office of the Prosecutor in the leadership research section, which researches and analyzes the former Yugoslavia, including its history, politics, demography and media. In addition to participating in day-to-day activities, interns are invited to attend lectures and other tribunal activities.

Established in 1993, the tribunal is a U.N. court of law dealing with war crimes that took place during the 1990s in the Balkans, particularly Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was the first war crimes court created by the U.N. and the first international war crimes tribunal since those of Nuremberg and Tokyo following World War II.

“Katie Beall’s prestigious appointment at the ICTY demonstrates the value of an education that includes the study of critical world languages and the areas where they are spoken,” said Marc L. Greenberg, chair of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. “Many KU graduates with Slavic language knowledge have gone on to work in law, diplomacy, security, intelligence, commerce and other fields connected with Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. We wish Katie well in the start of a promising, dynamic career and we are very proud that she will represent KU wherever she goes.”

Beall is majoring in environmental studies with a co-major in global and international studies and a minor in Slavic languages and literatures. She has been studying Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian for the last three-and-a-half years at KU.

“I decided to study Croatian at KU on a whim,” Beall said. “I knew I wanted to study two languages and wanted one to be a less-commonly taught one. It sounded interesting, and it ended up being a really good decision. I found the internship with the UN on the Internet. It fits perfectly with my interests and potential career path.”

Beall came to KU as a Watkins-Berger Scholar. The past four years, she has been a member of the KU rowing team. An honor roll student, she is the daughter of Raymond and Cynthia Beall and a graduate of Baldwin High School.

Last summer, Beall worked in the public affairs office at the U.S. Embassy in Zagreb, Croatia. Beall said she hopes to pursue graduate study in an area relating to international affairs or international studies, perhaps for the UN or a nongovernment organization.

“What excites me about it is that I will be doing positive work in an area that I have spent so much of my time learning about and actually getting to apply the language skills that I have been working on for so long,” she said. “I will get to spend four months living and working in the Netherlands and have the opportunity to work as part of perhaps the largest international entity in the world.”

KU is the only university in the Great Plains to offer doctoral as well as bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Slavic languages and literatures. The department has a full array of language, literature and linguistics courses for students interested in the study of Russian, Czech, Polish, Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian, and occasionally offers courses and independent study in Slovene and Ukrainian. In addition, the department offers Turkish and Yiddish language instruction.

For more information about the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, go to www2.ku.edu/~slavic.

For more information about the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, go to www.icty.org.