Le Dragon Déchaîné

LHMUN 2026: Navigating Power, Conflict and Fun

By Konstancija KEVISAITE & Nil TOPCULAR

The weekend of Feb. 20 to 22 was full of enthusiasm and excitement in the hallways and classrooms of the Le Havre campus, due to the Le Havre Model United Nations (LHMUN) 2026 conference. This year’s edition started on Feb. 20 with an opening ceremony which included an address from former British Army Officer General Sir Rupert Smith, senior commander in the Gulf and Bosnian Wars. It was also an official welcome to delegates from different schools and countries who came to Le Havre to attend the conference.

Following the opening ceremony, committees began their sessions debating various issues from human trafficking to the war on drugs. The topics were centered around this year’s theme of global security, especially focusing on times of crises. This year saw eight committees ranging from the Economic and Social Council to the Human Rights Council. Fitting to the Le Havre campus, an Association of Southeast Asian Nations and International Maritime Organization committees were also included, highlighting our focus on Asia and the seas and oceans.

The Game of Thrones committee garnered the most attention, as delegates represented characters from the famous TV show and debated the issue “Who rules Westeros?” It was also attended by the director of Le Havre Campus, Michael Hauchecorne, who officiated a fictional wedding.

Academically, the conference was operated in both French and English and was open to delegates with different experience levels. Mariam Abdul, Chair of the Human Rights Committee and a Master’s student at Paris-Saclay University, said that delegates worked very well and that the speeches were phenomenal, making it hard to choose who to award Best Delegate.

The Chairs of the Security Council, Camille Ostrowski and Natália Oliveira, however said in their interview that delegates were getting tired and demotivated over the course of the conference. Luckily for the delegates, the breaks and the multiple events organised throughout the conference helped regain energy and excitement throughout the conference. Snacks were provided during the breaks in between sessions every day, and the Amnesty International and UNICEF clubs also held a fundraiser bake sale to donate to UNICEF. An Amnesty International member, Marie Graille, said that the MUN conference allowed them to reach beyond the Le Havre campus.

The two nights of the conference were both eventful, as a bar night was held on Friday night, and a Gala was held on Saturday, where many students dressed up and enjoyed the night at La Grande École. The conference concluded the following day with a lively ceremony on campus, during which Chairs distributed awards to their best delegates and the MUNSHU board bowed to the public.

Fun, amusing, engaging, enlightening, passionate, unforgettable, an investment in the future — all these words were used by the delegates to describe the LHMUN experience. Delegate and first-year student of Le Havre campus Hannah Schepers (Human Rights Council) said that doing research and reading in between the lines to understand a country’s stance can sometimes become a headache. Another delegate and fellow first-year student Erika Nanette (Human Rights Council) added to that, saying there is a thin line between being too diplomatic and misrepresenting the country; however, such challenges are welcome, as they allow students to discuss previously lesser-known topics. Similarly, delegate and first-year student David Cretu (Economic and Social Council) agreed that, in such an environment, it can be stressful to find a compromise; but to secure world peace, one has to practice it. This year’s LHMUN also welcomed eager students from high schools in Rouen and Luxembourg. Even though they had different past experiences, all students agreed that they loved the campus for its diverse voices and its ability to put in the effort, even if getting the best deal for their country might not be the greatest outcome for the rest of the world.

The Secretary General, Franzcesca Chiara De La Cruz, entered the interview with a heart full of gratitude, calling LHMUN a chaotic and enriching experience, as seeing it carried out in life sometimes felt surreal. The organiser thanked the team, the administration of SciencesPo, and the sponsors for helping to make this event happen, despite the administrative bumps along the way. When asked whether MUN holds a special place in her heart, the Secretary General responded with a smile, emphasising that the most beautiful thing about MUN is the sense of collectiveness created as they strive to find solutions to pertinent issues and meet people from different walks of life, especially Sciences Po students from other campuses. From overthrowing a republic to dance punishments: mixing goofiness with recent events is what makes MUN stand out. As an organiser, Chiara mentioned that she has complete confidence in the upcoming board and wishes them well, asking them to stay organised and maintain the relationships they have established this year.

For organisers and participants alike, LHMUN was an experience like no other. From solving world crises to weddings and galas, this event witnessed it all. Once again, it was the organising team who made it come to life and all the participants from different places engaging in it who became the driving force behind the event.

“Jump and the net will appear”: An Interview with Isabelle Letelie

By Giulia Porcu

“You develop a kind of sensitivity, almost like an extra sense, that allows you to connect with people even without sharing the same language,” said Isabelle Letelie when asked to describe the challenge, and enrichment, her volunteering missions around the world have posed.

Vibrant, curious and radiant, she left an indelible mark on the beginning of my university experience: her desire to travel, her curiosity about other cultures and her commitment to volunteering are the perfect ingredients for an interview–one I hope will render justice to the unique persona she is.

With a steaming coffee in front of us and the sun still down, she opened up about her latest missions and motives behind them.

“I find it very enriching to do things that are not paid, to give your time freely, and to work with people you would probably never meet otherwise. Last year, I went to India with an organization, then to Cambodia, and also to Morocco during the summer, with the same French organization that organizes medical missions. Then in October, I went back to Morocco independently to join people I had met earlier—especially a woman who organizes an artistic and humanitarian caravan in villages in the High Atlas, near Ouarzazate. I really fell in love with the country, Amazing culture, and the people I met there, which is why I wanted to return and be part of that project”

Did you notice cultural differences being an obstacle to establishing relationships with locals?

I think that from the moment you choose to go on this kind of mission, you have to accept that it will be destabilizing—and that’s actually the point. You need to be curious and open to stepping outside your comfort zone. Of course, it’s not always easy, but that’s exactly why it’s so valuable. It pushes you to question your habits, your way of thinking, and your way of living. Once you let go and accept that you won’t always understand everything, it becomes incredibly enriching. So yes, it’s difficult, but that’s also what makes it so great.

When you say “accepting that you won’t always understand anything” do you also refer to the preponderant language barrier?

The language barrier can be difficult to overcome, however when I went to India and Cambodia, I was with a French organization, and we had translators, which made things much easier.

This time will be different, because I’ll be spending 15 days alone in India. And when I’ve tried speaking English with Indians before, I found the accent quite challenging—so that’s a bit of an unknown for me.

That said, I have a friend who traveled around the world for a year and a half and barely spoke English, and she told me it was never really a problem. She said you always find ways to communicate, and that she developed a new ability to understand people beyond language.

We know that non-verbal communication represents a huge part of how we connect: that’s one of the most amazing things about traveling—you learn to communicate differently, not just through words.

That’s also why I enjoy speaking English, even if I’m not fluent. It forces you to think differently, to observe more, to pay attention to details in others. You develop a kind of sensitivity, almost like an extra sense, that allows you to connect with people even without sharing the same language.

Was there, perhaps, a particular encounter that marked you the most?

Yes, definitely. The most meaningful encounter was with the woman leading the caravan. I had already met her in July, and she’s the reason I decided to come back. She created what she calls the “Caravan of Love.” For me, she represents a powerful counterexample to the stereotypes we often have in France about Moroccan Muslim women.

In France, there are still many prejudices about veiled women and about Islam. Meeting her completely challenged those assumptions. She was very different from what I had imagined or what we often hear back home. That encounter was really the most impactful and decisive for me.

Could you guide me through what a typical day looks like during these missions?

The caravan lasted one week and moved from village to village. The idea was to offer performances, artistic workshops, and distribute donations such as school supplies, clothes and household items. We were about twenty people, traveling by car with a small truck carrying all the equipment.

In the morning, we would travel to the next village, depending on the distance. When we arrived, there was always a welcoming protocol: we were received by local associations and village representatives, and we would share tea together, which is an important cultural moment in Morocco.

In the afternoon, we organized workshops. I personally led painting workshops with children, and there were also sports activities. Lunch could last up to four hours, so the daily rhythm was quite different from what we are used to.

In the evening, from around 8 p.m. until sometimes 1 a.m., there was a big show for the whole village. There were performances for children—clowns, singers—as well as interactive games involving adults. It was a series of acts throughout the evening, and at the end, we distributed school supplies to the children. At the end of the day, there was always something special. For example, each day they would give a washing machine to a woman in the village who was particularly in need. There were also small gifts for the games and prizes for participants. Then there was a kind of closing ceremony where each child was called one by one, with photos and a really warm, communal atmosphere.

After that, we would eat together, and then go to bed. And the next morning, we would set off again for another village.

Looking ahead, could you imagine living more permanently in one of these countries and helping a community over a longer period of time?

In Morocco, yes—I’m starting to think about it. When I first came back, my idea was more to travel frequently but to different places each time, and that’s still part of my plan. For example, I’m planning to stay in France in January and February, then leave again for a month in March. I don’t yet know where, but I really want to go back to Morocco.

So now I’m looking into what I could do there—maybe develop projects, get more involved.

Would that be the case, how would you reconcile it with your private life?

I do have some family constraints, especially because I need to take care of my mother, who is ill, so I can’t move abroad permanently.

But for the first time, I’m thinking differently. I’m not old, but I’ve started to imagine what it would be like to live and even grow older somewhere else. Traveling has made me realize how big the world is and how much there is to learn. I think one of my main qualities is curiosity—I like being challenged, I like being destabilized.

And now, I can’t really imagine my life without that anymore, without leaving France regularly. I’ve also started to see the limits of the Western lifestyle, and I don’t always feel aligned with certain aspects of my own culture anymore. So yes, it’s definitely something I’m considering.

I know you are a published writer, have you ever thought of writing a book either inspired by or documenting such experiences?

That’s something people often suggest, but no—not really. When I’m there, I just want to experience everything fully. For example, I usually love reading, but I can’t even read when I’m on these missions.

That said, this time will be a bit different. I’ll be doing 15 days of medical mission and then 15 days of traveling on my own, which is something I’ve never done before. So I do have a small writing project in mind—something semi-fictional.

I’ll probably share things on Instagram, and maybe develop something more from that experience. We’ll see.

If you could give advice to your past self before going on your first mission, what would it be?

I would say: just dare.

There’s a phrase that really stayed with me after Morocco: “Jump, and the net will appear.” I love it, and it has become a kind of personal mantra for me.

Before leaving, you have to accept that you will be destabilized. You have to be ready to strip away your certainties, in a way—and that’s not easy. That’s exactly what makes the experience so valuable.

Grassroots Rhythms: Music, Identity, and Gen-Z in Southeast Asia

by Theethad Thipsoda

My digicam flashed as I took a photo of the crowd of familiar faces whose hands were holding almost-finished and completely-forgotten plates, huddled tightly around the small 27-inch television in the living room of my shared apartment. It was not the typical Sunday night here at our apartment: Felicia Aldiyani, one of my closest friends here in college, who grew up near the beaches of Bali, dressed in Indonesian batik and passionately sharing about Jedak Jeduk, the TikTok viral dance music style in Indonesia, with so much enthusiasm it was almost contagious.

The scene looked like a lecture, but also a potluck dinner. Before long, it transformed into a dance floor. In fact, it was somewhat all three at once. This was the first edition of a new event series as part of our Southeast Asia Club’s Grassroots Project, an initiative to create meaningful shared space to celebrate local cultures, flavors and ideas from the Southeast Asian region.

After weeks of planning and persuasion, we had brought together a few of our fellow Southeast Asians on campus to share their homegrown electronic dance music styles, including Viet Vinahouse, Thai Morlam remixes, Pinoy Budot, Indonesian Jedak Jeduk and Malay Dangdut music. These electronic beats are often described as psychedelic, distinct with rapid rave-like beats, extremely easy to dance to, but also often dismissed as “low-brow”.

Take the example of Budot, the Filipino EDM, which was born in the late 2000s in a squatter’s settlement in Davao City. Over time, it gained popularity with local populations but also became associated with drug cartels, gangsters and marginality. Like many of these other styles, budot was born and raised in the periphery of mainstream culture and what it meant to have “good taste”.

These electronic dances are remarkably different from polished, mainstream popular music, which one can argue is Western-influenced, with a slow pace, piano and guitar instrumental. Because of their humble origins, many of these music genres were stigmatized during the early years of their development in the late 90s and 2000s.

However, in recent years, these music styles have begun to be embraced with the process of globalization and the growing popularity of short-form video content. We see these music styles resurfacing in new forms. Thai remix, for example, was used by the K-Pop band CORTIS (one of their members, James, is half-Thai) in their song Fashion (2025), which they danced to on TikTok, gaining 6.7M likes, or by LISA from Blackpink when teaching Thai dance moves on Korean television. Moreover, young teenagers take control of these music styles, embracing them on TikTok and Reels.

Chiara Francesca de la Cruz (2A), our Filipino lecturer, shared that local politicians have used budot dances in their campaigns. Even former President Rodrigo Duterte had danced to budot. Another interesting fact was from Dita, one of our Indonesian presenters, that in Indonesia, many Gen-Z youth post their college acceptance letters to jedak-jeduk edits with slow-motion “velocity” transitions and bass-heavy montages. Many await this TikTok ritual as if it were somewhat of a rite of passage.

What made the evening particularly meaningful was that it was our fellow classmates presenting to us, not academics at a usual panel talk. They have experienced growing up listening and dancing to these sounds and can provide personal analysis from the ethnographic side of these dances to the musical style of the specific genre.

The “living room lecture format” was not an original invention of ours but rather an adaptation from a few other community initiatives we had seen online. We were inspired by New York-based Living Room Lectures, a queer event series where local academics, professionals or simply passionate amateurs would share about a subject they are passionate about to an open-minded crowd in a living room.

Another event series we drew inspiration from is GrownKid, also based in the Big Apple. This social club’s self-proclaimed slogan is “The Meaning of Life is Play.” It brings together 18-24 year olds through play-based events with the quirkiest and somewhat whimsical concepts including “Wrestling Speed Dating” where you literally bring yourself to the arena and challenge someone to a physical brawl (consensually, of course) with hopes of finding your soulmate, or “Loitering” where the whole event’s goal is just to loiter around a speaker under a bridge.

I believe creating safe spaces for creative and cultural exchange, intertwined with play-culture, is something many youth our age yearn for, especially in the present-day era where the loneliness epidemic, emotional detachment, and the virtue of non-chalant-ism reigns. Dancing to electronic music in a living room is perhaps an antidote to our modern boredom and lack of community without performativity. This little experimental event was an attempt to counter this.

By the end of the night, we had made no less than five dance videos to be posted on our social media. But in the atmosphere, we could sense a lingering energy of personal connection, and from our presenters, a shared sense of pride in our local homegrown cultures.

I would like to extend a big thank you to those who made it all happen: my fellow SEA Club captains Bartholomew and Nikki, as well as all of the guest lecturers for their passionate dedication: Anh, Carla, Ha My, Angelia, Minh-Tam, Chiara, Felicia and Dita.

Can Slowness Be Radical?

by Lisa Ledieu

Speed has become the default condition of contemporary life. We scroll faster, watch more, and consume more; yet we retain less. In a world where attention is ceaselessly harvested and platforms are engineered to replace one thing with the next before reflection can begin, we must ask whether this relentless drive for speed actually serves us or if slowness offers a more powerful alternative. Thus, this article aims to explore how embracing slowness across different forms of culture can itself become a radical act, beginning at the intimate scale of the individual and extending outward to reshape culture and society as a whole.

Slowness on the individual scale: reclaiming attention

To slow down cultural consumption is, first and foremost, to reclaim one’s own mind. The internet’s systematic erosion of the capacity for sustained thought is well-documented: prolonged online habits rewire our reading instincts until focus drifts after barely a page; the mind restless and hungry for the next stimulus. If the act of reading has become so compromised, so too has any sustained cultural engagement. To choose a different pace is, in itself, a form of practice.

Take cinema: Edward Yang’s Yi Yi (2000) runs for nearly three hours. It does not hurry. It lingers on faces, on silences, on the slow accumulation of small events that constitute a family’s unraveling. To watch it fully is to adopt a different rhythm that rewards patience with genuine emotional depth. Film theory holds, more broadly, that the way a film is paced actively shapes how viewers feel and ultimately make sense of what they see. Choosing slower, more demanding cinema is therefore not passive. It is a refusal of the stimulation treadmill that mainstream viewing increasingly imposes.

Yi Yi frames by Edward Yang, 2000

In museums, the same logic applies. Studies have shown that the average visitor spends between fifteen and thirty seconds before any given work — often glancing at the label longer than the artwork itself. Against this, some practitioners and art historians have argued for what they call “deceleration”: an active, engineered slowing of the encounter, spending long stretches with a single painting rather than accumulating impressions across an entire room. Art historian Jennifer Roberts has shown that artworks hold layers of meaning that remain entirely invisible to the casual glance, only surfacing through the kind of patient, prolonged attention that most visitors never grant them. Aesthetic experience, moreover, is not purely visual: as the architect Juhani Pallasmaa argues, it is bodily, multisensory and requires time to unfold fully, rather than being exhausted in a single observation. Thus, pausing before a painting is not inactivity, but the first step toward hearing everything it has to say.

In fashion, slowness operates at the level of personal ethics. The designer Kate Fletcher frames the slow fashion movement not merely as an environmental strategy but as a rediscovery of the relationship between object and self, one that prioritises human needs, local production and the idea that caring for things over time is itself meaningful. To choose a thrifted coat or an artisanal piece implies a pause, a moment of reflection before desire and impulse. It is, in miniature, a philosophical act.

Even in digital life, the intentional separation of “slow” from “fast” content, carving out time for longer reads or considered engagement, constitutes a meaningful assertion of inner freedom. Attention is not an infinite resource; choosing to spend it deliberately is therefore a way to reclaim it.

Slowness on the global scale: a quiet resistance

What begins as a private gesture, however, can extend to a global scale. Individual acts of slowness can accumulate into something collectively significant, forming a quiet but persistent resistance to the systems that profit from speed.

In visual culture, from cinema to art, mindful engagement challenges a world where depth is routinely sacrificed to volume. If viewers resist the binge model and refuse to let one film or episode dissolve into the next, they disrupt a logic built on rapid turnover: allowing the work to be returned to, reflected upon and truly experienced rather than merely seen. In doing so, they also push back against the industry’s constant demand for renewal, a demand that increasingly drives both creative overwork and reliance on AI to sustain such pace. As Pallasmaa suggests, speed produces a kind of collapsed present in which images circulate as disposable goods rather than objects of sustained encounter. Spending time with fewer works cultivates a deeper literacy, less drawn to the superficial or sensational. From this perspective, it is not only a form of personal growth but also a way of refusing the cultural logic that treats art as disposable content.

In fashion, the stakes are perhaps the most tangible. Fast fashion’s environmental cost is inseparable from the speed at which the system operates. Slowing down means, in Fletcher’s terms, that designers, buyers and consumers become genuinely aware of the impact of their choices on workers, communities and ecosystems. It also involves recognising that the prevailing business model of consumerist fashion is structurally incompatible with sustainability precisely because it is built on the logic of continuous replacement. To buy less and more slowly, to favour durable materials and small-scale makers, is not merely aesthetic preference. It is a material intervention in a system that depends on haste, and a structural refusal of its terms.

Finally, in the digital attention economy, platforms are not passively encountered: they are carefully designed environments engineered to make stillness feel uncomfortable and slowness feel like loss. Their mechanism is specific. Behavioral addiction research has shown that systems become compulsive when they combine small, unreachable goals with unpredictable bursts of positive feedback, a pattern that describes social media with unsettling precision (e.g. likes, notifications, new content). The imbalance is intentional: as one technology ethicist has observed, the user brings willpower, while designers and engineers on the other side of the screen work to exploit it. To resist this is — again — challenging the business model built on the exploitation of our inner time.

A final note

This is not a guidebook, nor a pamphlet. It is not an order either. Transitioning toward a slower mode of cultural consumption does not mean immediately severing ties with everything fast, immediate, and characteristic of our global way of living. Rather, it is an invitation. Slowness, as a posture, is worth considering not because it is virtuous, but because it is enriching: it opens up dimensions of culture that speed tends to close off, and allows individual choices to extend their impact when practiced at a larger scale, contributing to a broader cultural shift. Ultimately, there is something to be gained from choosing, now and then, a different tempo: one that, in small acts multiplied across individuals, can influence culture and society as a whole. Consider this a shared reflection on what that might feel like, and what it might be worth.

Sitting in Monet’s Footsteps

by Elena Hayashi

À la plage, the day melts

The waves crash, again, again –

they break their names upon me

– and leave, while I remain

Blue dissolves into violet,

Violet into yellow gold

Maybe Monet May have rested here

Chasing the gradient light

Leaving a permanent trace of the sun

Now others come –

They sit, they watch, they eat tiramisu –

But I –

I keep my place

No hands, No voice,

Just “The Rock” à la plage