CNN has begun training future international journalists in Brynania, a fictional country created by political science professor Rex Brynen along with thousands of his students.
Created for POLI 450: Peacebuilding, the country served for 20 years as the centrepiece of a week-long simulation of complex peace and humanitarian operations.
Although Brynen hasn’t offered the course since 2020, Brynania lives on through CNN Academy. The training program has run the simulation five times in four years, in locations like Abu Dhabi, Mexico City and Dublin. Additional dates have already been scheduled.
“A simulation can bring out things that you can’t learn through lectures or assigning readings; you need to give people the opportunity to make mistakes and for things to go wrong,” said Brynen. “The fact that CNN and partner institutions want to use this approach that was developed at McGil is a real testimony to how well it works.”
Climate change to toxic waste
At McGill, Brynania was beset by civil war. If things went well, the class might manage to bring peace through negotiations and humanitarian assistance.
“It was a huge endeavour,” said Brynen. “It was 12 hours of participation seven days a week, but really, all 24 hours were live. Students were doing things in person, digitally and remotely, which represented seven months of a complex peace operation.”
Brynen estimates that over 2,000 McGill students contributed to Brynania. One of them was Alireza Hajihosseini, now Director of CNN Academy and Deputy Bureau Chief at CNN Abu Dhabi.
Hajihosseini told Arab News the simulation was one of the “most memorable and intense learning experiences” of his academic career. “So when we started thinking about designing an industry-first journalist simulation I knew I had to reach out to Rex; I wanted to recreate that experience.”
As a result, Brynania has only gotten more complex. The civil war is over, but the country has since been subject to climate change, digital disinformation, forced displacement and toxic waste dumping.
Brynen and Hajihosseini have simulated press conferences, sit-down interviews, media scrums and field visits. There’s also a social media system with hundreds of items.
“We try to make it seem very real,” said Brynen. “We will wake up students in the middle of the night. We will car bomb a major character when we know they’re at dinner. If you do something that would get a journalist arrested in real life, we’ll put on a security costume and take you for a police interrogation.”
For students who participated in Montreal, the simulation has had a lasting impact.
“The simulation was the most valuable learning experience of my time at McGill,” said Phoebe Warren, a McGill alumna who received POLI 450’s version of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018. “There is no better way to consolidate knowledge than by putting it into practice.”
Warren went on to study law and now works as a Trainee Solicitor in the U.K.
“The skills I used in the Brynania simulation – political awareness, quick yet thoughtful decision-making and the ability to manage competing pressures – continue to serve me in immigration law and policy,” she said.
Rooted in McGill
Now offered in two languages and multiple countries, Brynania’s global footprint continues to grow.
The Rockefeller Foundation and the Gates Foundation, two CNN Academy partners, have provided funding for content producers from the Global South. The students go on to spotlight issues ranging from wildlife preservation in East Africa to reproductive rights in Nepal.
Yet Brynania remains a distinctly McGill product.
“The names of the neighbouring countries are places like Concordia, Uqamistan and Udem, so there’s a lot of Montreal built into the sim,” said Brynen.
It also remains a safe space to learn.
“If you asked students, ‘Would you make this mistake?’, they’ll say ‘Duh, I’m not going to do that.’ But if you put them under pressure, just like a real international journalist on a breaking story, they’ll realize, ‘Oops, if I’m not careful, I will do that.’ And we’d rather they do it now than on the job.”
Rex Brynen’s course POLI 452: Conflict Simulation, which will teach students how to design simulations like Brynania, will be offered in Winter 2026.