2016 - Emily Springer (Department of Sociology)
Emily's dissertation research focused on the evaluation of ‘women’s empowerment,’ a transformative, culturally-embedded social process. Broadly, how are accountability, development worker identity, and knowledge production affected when development organizations are contractually obligated to demonstrate results through quantified evaluation systems? Her research analyzed how people located throughout transnational evaluation chains feel accountable to metrics, and how this sense of responsibility is cultivated and reproduced by the recent focus on performance metrics. These ‘products’ of evaluation and the expertise they embody provide the framework for new forms of global governance in an increasingly interconnected and measured world.
2017 - Beverly Fok (Department of Anthropology)
Beverly’s research looks at how “land reclamation” projects in Singapore have fueled extensive sand mining operations across Southeast Asia, giving rise to a newly mobile, highly liquid form of land. That newfound liquidity puts challenge to existing frameworks of sovereignty and international environmental law. How to account for this latest, piecemeal method of land grabbing? Using the case study of Koh Kong Province in Cambodia, the research examines some of the obstacles local communities face in trying to make land claims and obtain environmental justice given prevailing regimes of international law.
2019 - Heather Wares (Department of History)
Heather's research looks at aspects of global governance as related to the construction of South Africa’s maritime spaces as spaces of whiteness. This together with her previous work experience in the fields of maritime archeology and maritime and underwater cultural heritage, making permit decisions which potentially influenced people’s access to resources, will build a framework for the continued reliance governmental institutions, NGO’s and commercial enterprises involved in maritime security, environmental protection and economic opportunity, have on western epistemologies which inform the global governance of the ocean. This research intends to lay framework for a strong epistemological and ontological foundation for the greater project.
2020 - Isaac Asante-Wusu (Department of Geography, Environment & Society)
Isaac's research advances our understanding of how forces of democracy and different forms of urban governance shape market-driven urban water policies, which lead to unequal access to potable water in urban Africa. Specifically, the work examines how state-civil society dynamics in water decision making processes, the capabilities of states to coordinate competing priorities in urban water policy implementation, and the institutional structures for the provision of municipal water services shape access to potable water in urban Africa. He draws empirical evidence from Accra, Ghana and Pretoria, South Africa to deepen our comparative understanding of the disparate experiences across democratic regimes.
2021 - Snigdha Kumar (Department of Sociology)