Travel-Study Experiences
LEARNING THROUGH IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCES IN SETTINGS AROUND THE WORLD THAT ENRICH AND CHALLENGE.
ravel is in our DNA at SSU. The original 1975 vision for St. Stephen's University included travel as an important curricular component that was crucial to the whole-person formation of our students. What started out as a three-month immersion in Paris during the first years of SSU's existence, developed into a more fully integrated travel-study component in Europe and Southeast Asia starting in 1988.
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Today, SSU offers four trips and learning tours as part of our master's programs, which we offer in collaboration with a number of dedicated partners and friends from around the world. These travel-study experiences give our students and participants from the public direct encounters with communities, histories, and movements that are engaged in peace, justice, and reconciliation. Through immersive, place-based learning, students engage with scholars, practitioners, and community leaders whose lived experience deepens academic study and theological reflection. These experiences integrate intellectual, relational, and spiritual formation, preparing students to engage complex social and political realities with humility, discernment, and creativity — Each of these experiences provide the space and opportunity for our students to cultivate a more generous engagement with our world through the lens of SSU's mission to prepare our community for a life of justice, beauty, and compassion.
SSU Study Abroad Trips and Learning Tours
North of Ireland, Scotland, and England
PJST/THEO 6400
6 credit hours | Open to Theology & Culture and JFI students
St. Stephen's University offers a Study Abroad Trip to Northern Ireland, Scotland, and England with a focus on decolonizing our faith and peace praxis with The Troubles as a backdrop. This trip is for students and friends of SSU (both credit and audit options available) and is an opportunity to journey along side other theologians and peacemakers and learn from reputable scholars and practitioners of peacebuilding and reconciliation, ex-combatants and victims of violent conflict during The Troubles in Northern Ireland, theologians and mediators, contemplatives and pilgrims, and other fascinating and invested people who are directly involved in grassroots, community-based peacebuilding, conflict transformation, and reconciliation from the ground up, while considering various theological, cultural, and peace and justice dimensions of decolonization.
DATES: AUGUST 11 – 27, 2026
South Africa
PJST/THEO 6401
6 credit hours | Open to Theology & Culture and JFI students
St. Stephen's University, in coordination with Peace Catalyst International (peacecatalyst.org), offers a Study Abroad Trip to South Africa with a focus on “Healing the Colonial Wound: Decolonizing Our Faith and Peace Praxis” facilitated in partnership with Iziko Lamaqabane (izikolamaqabane.org). With the anti-apartheid struggle (past and present) as our reflective backdrop, this trip is for students and friends of SSU (both credit and audit options available) and is an opportunity to journey together alongside fellow theologians and peacemakers while learning from community organizers, theologians, scholar activists, historians, peace and justice, and practitioners who are directly involved in grassroots, community-based peacebuilding, the black-consciousness and black-theology movements, and modern spatial-justice struggles, while considering various theological, cultural, and material dimensions of decolonization.
DATES: AUGUST 8 – 22, 2026
Winnipeg / Treaty 1 Territory
RST 5400
6 credit hours | Open to all students
St. Stephen’s University offers a ten-day Learning Tour to Winnipeg, Treaty 1 Territory (and surrounding areas), where participants will learn about local reconciliation efforts between settler and Indigenous peoples. We will meet with elders and knowledge-keepers as well as Indigenous and settler activists, academics, artists and others who are directly involved in community-based work to foster cultural revitalization, social justice and right relations between Indigenous and settler peoples.
DATES: MAY 29 – JUNE 7, 2026
Bethlehem, Palestine
BIPJ – BethBC
6 credit hours | Open to Track 3 Peace & Justice students
Offered entirely by the Bethlehem Institute for Peace & Justice (bipj.org), the purpose of this two-week residential Summer Intensive in Bethlehem is to provide students a first-hand experience of the challenges of peacemaking and of pursuing justice in the context of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The intensive will help students bridge the divide between theory and peacemaking praxis on the ground. Most of the ten days of the intensive are structured around a morning time for spiritual reflection, several hours of lecture and/or field trips, followed by a debriefing about the field trip. Students will have scheduled conversations with Christian, Muslim, and Jewish leaders, peacemakers, and organizations.
DATES: LAST TWO WEEKS IN MAY