Math major studies the economic geography of the World Cup (only in Verrazano!)

Brianna Di Stefano, Verrazano Class of 2019, earned a degree in Mathematics and a minor in Geography.


Completing this capstone project has given me the opportunity to study and learn about a topic that I was able to choose.  Being able to choose the topic I wished to study and research is a rare occurrence throughout school.  Although in the beginning of the capstone process, the task seems daunting and requires extra work, once you find your topic and start diving into the paper, it becomes easier.  Trying to pick a topic was simple yet difficult simultaneously.  I have always loved soccer, so I knew I wanted to incorporate soccer into my paper because I was able to choose my own topic, but it took some time to figure out how to write a scholarly paper involving soccer.  Since my minor is geography, my mentor for this paper, Professor Kabachnik, who is the Associate Professor of Geography at CSI, helped me narrow down my topic and outline for the paper after discussing several potential ideas to use and paths to take for this project.  

Having Professor Kabachnik as my mentor for this project was extremely helpful because he is knowledgeable in the background for my paper, since it required geographical aspects of social and economical evaluations on a developing country.  Once he helped me select my topic and lay out the outline, I was organized and set up to complete all of the parts of my paper that were necessary for my research.  Throughout the writing of my paper, I read several articles and took note of important and interesting facts and ideas relating to my topic.  By collecting and sorting through an abundance of information, I was able to produce a scholarly paper with relevant and interesting information about the images and realities of South Africa hosting the 2010 FIFA World Cup.


If I continued to pursue research relating to my paper, it would involve studying more mega events in addition to the 2010 FIFA World Cup.  My paper focused predominately on the South African World Cup, with a few facts about other World Cups.  Because South Africa is a developing country, studying the images and realities of other developing countries will further progress and evolve the research about the impacts of mega events.  My paper involved research about the image desired by the government of South Africa, the image imagined by the local residents, and the image depicted by Western media as well as the realities of the mega event, which include the present use of the stadiums that were built or renovated, and how South Africa is perceived globally.  My paper uses festivalisation as one of the main concepts because festivalisation uses mega events of public events to develop a country’s infrastructure and economy.  Using all these ideas and applying them to other developing countries who have hosted or will host a World Cup will help understand the true impacts of hosting a mega event, and whether it is beneficial for developing nations to spend billions of dollars to host a mega event.