GISA Elections Fall 2025 – Full Report of the First Debate

On Monday 6 October, in Auditorium A2 of maison de la Paix, that hosts the Geneva Graduate Institute, the first debate of this fall’s election cycle was held. 

The debates are a chance for candidates to share their ideas, answer questions from the students that they will be representing and advocate for their platforms. 

The candidates running present at this debate were just three:

• Kanikka Sersia, PhD student in the ANSO department, running as Vice-President of PhD Students;
• Arkoprabho Hazra, MINT Student in the track Human Rights and Humanitarianism, rerunning as Communications Director;
• Hamna Chohan, MINT Student in the track Migration, Mobilities and Borders, running, her too for reconfirmation, as Administrative Director.

But attendance was very low for this debate, sadly the lowest ever see in a GISA Event on student advocacy in the last year.

The causes for this are also addressed later during the Q&A session. Some plausible answers are that this is either because all candidates were running uncontested, or because the administrative and communications directors themselves, who are in charge of sharing the communications of GISA events, are not allowed to work during the election time as they are formally running for re-election.

Kanikka Sersia starts off the debate by presenting her platform.

Kanikka is running out of the motivation to make the PhD journey more social, aiming to crates bridges between the PhD community, the institute and the rest of the student body. You can read her platform here.

Kanikka’s research focuses on the intersection of labour and technology. On top of that, she has experience in collaborative, policy-oriented research with the International Labour Organization in Geneva, Oxford’s Fairwork project, and the V.V. Giri National Labour Institute in India.

She wants to build on the initiatives already set in motion by the previous PhD Vice-President. So her goal is to ensure continuity while also addressing key priorities such as tuition fees, financial and contract-related concerns, and the practical day-to-day needs of students, including access to stationery, proper lighting, and shared kitchen facilities. 

In addition, she plans to work closely with career services to organize tailored workshops for PhD students, focusing on job market preparation, publication strategies, and networking opportunities. She also envisions creating a curated roster of job openings, organizations, and events aligned with relevant themes, along with sessions on how to effectively leverage the PhD skill set in various professional contexts. On the community front, she is committed to fostering a supportive environment through mentoring events with PhD alumni, spaces for open debate and discussion, and writing retreats. Her broader aim is to strengthen the sense of community and provide meaningful support throughout the PhD journey.

Unfortunately due to technical and organisational difficulties, we are unable to report fully on Kanikka’s Q&A and the rest of her intervention. We apologise to Kanikka in the firs place for not being able to make justice to her participation to the debate and to the student body who was counting on our reporting.

Next up are Arko and Hamna. As I mentioned above they are both running for their re-election after working for GISA in the past year. In their platforms they speaks expensively of that they have achieved and what they promise to work on during their last term, and I invite you to read them here.

When he goes up on stage to, someone form the audience highlights that he is running uncontested for the second time in a row.

In his initial pitch he acknowledges, and apologises for, his shortcomings, which is a good way to address with honesty the rest of the good work he has done as a Communications director. He lets his opening address run short and starts taking questions form the audience.

Vayunamy Bawa, GISA President asks about his relationship with the description of the role vis-a-vis what the actual commitments and efforts he had to put in the role.

Arko explains that all the role descriptions tend to be reductive and something that doesn’t emerge is the big effort that comms put in liasoning and facilitating communications.

Someone from the audience asks what, according to him, pushes students not to run?

Arko explains that he confronted himself with other candidates, last year, trying to find a middle ground and eventually having them support his candidature, this worked well, he explains, especially with second year students whose time at the institute was gonna be short-lived anyways.

This year he also spoke to some first year students interested in the position. He feels that what he has done over his mandate, might have been beyond the expectations of the position. And sharing how much effort he ended up putting might have “scared some potential candidates off”.

He also explained that in the past years, to avoid this mismatch between expectations and  the other comms Communications Directors would have an assistant that would go on becoming the new communication director in the following cycle of elections. He said he would be open to implement a similar model too.

Someone from the audience asks how they see themselves improving as Communications Director as he has already held the position for a year. Arko explains his will to focus more on social media, and especially instagram as a way to engage even more the student body. He aims to also focus in making all the internal and external communications easier to take place.

Next up on stage is Hamna Chohan. Running to have the position of Administrative Director be reconfirmed.

She starts her pitch by saying how stressful and torturing the past year was, but also saying that she had a great time as the Administrative Director of GISA.
She stands up while talking and comes closer to the audience, that she also jokes on it, it’s unfortunately not very numerous. She later explains that she changes her speech on the spot because of this lack of engagement in the debate. In fact, while she was looking back and explaining her work as Administrative Director, she explains that she was the one establishing a shared Activity tracker to avoid scheduling conflicts; that she worked on diversity and inclusion; and that she also implemented the Feedback mechanism to make sure to always improve. While she explain there is still a need for more virtual and physical spaces of exchange, the engagement with GISA has incredibly improved over her term and that is why many student initiatives immediately took off with both first and second year students participating.

For the future of her role she foresees an improvement of the Political activism. She explains that GISA is now a much more stable institution thanks through her work, so it is now important to support and engage the many Initiatives of the institute that work on amazing projects.

GISA President Vayunamu, asks the first question explaining that she as seen an tissue on efficiency, how does Hamna wants to work on these small day by day task as an admin of the board?

Hamna explains that, as Arko also mentioned, the requirements for the positions are always mismatched with the needs and the actual groundwork needed. She feels like there are not many shortcomings on her side and that many of this issues are organisational issues that, for the good and the bad, depend on the availability of the rest of the board members. 

As a matter of fact, Arko, running as Communications Director, but now speaking from the audience, follows up on this question asking Hamna if she thinks this is something that can be fixed or if this is a normal rotation of things.

Hamna replies that, according to her, this is one of the biggest challenges even if in a way this is normal. But at the end of the day, it is team effort that can help.
She explains also that they are loosing accountability within the GISA Board and that it is important for her to better facilitate administrative tasks to work on that. 

Inés Leon Gimenez, VP of Master’s ask: ”What do you wish to implement and how has your role evolved over the course of your mandate? And how do you want to implement the changes that you perceive as needed?”

Hamna answers saying that she really wants the description of the role of Administrative Director to be re-drafted so as to make it more representative of what really needs to be done for a successful GISA.
In her opinion, advocacy goes along with the expectations of every GISA role and this should emerge clearly. Just working on administrative tasks will not help the student body achieve many milestones that she has instead managed to. WIth this mentality she coordinated the misconduct management working group; she managed to have a multipurpose room established; and she explained that even if she doesn’t have responsibilities in the event but always tries to attend as many as possible. 

Bhavya Goal, as a member of the audience asks if she think she would benefit, also on a welfare sense, form sharing her responsibilities.

Hamna explains that she genuinely doesn’t have an answer for this. She explains that for her it is important be the one accommodating newer members to have a smoother transition. For her this solidarity is essential because it helps with the team building.

She concluded by applauding the current GISA Board members as they were among the first board to keep working over the summer to welcome new students.

Lots of good points were made, especially considering the inside knowledge two of the candidates have! Despite the low participation, we hope this report can spread around what has been said and help you get to know the candidates better!