The 2003–2004 IGCC dissertation fellows come from a wide range of
backgrounds and perspectives. Their fields of study include history, communications,
political science, economics, sociology, anthropology, education,
environmental
science, and psychology. They are
united, however, by a keen intellectual interest in the problems of international
conflict and cooperation.
IGCC has been providing funding
opportunities for students and faculty of
the University of California since its inception in 1983. The application cycle
for fellowships,
internships, and grants
takes place in the fall of each academic year. Subscribing to the IGCC
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I have been studying and working in the field of international development
since I graduated from college in 1987. During a year in Ethiopia as a volunteer
with the
International Foundation for Education and Self-Help (1999–2000), I became
particularly interested in the relationships between conflict, famine, and
international relations.
Goals: Upon completion of my Ph.D., I intend to pursue an academic career in the field of
communication and consult with organizations that are involved in implementing information and
communications technology for development, particularly in Africa.
Dissertation title: The Politics of Information in Famine Early Warning: Implications for
Famine Detection, Mitigation, and Prevention
Abstract: This study examines the political choices behind the models
of famine that different famine early warning systems use. Famine early warning
systems have become a major part of famine prevention efforts since the mid-1970s,
but have not succeeded in reducing famine occurrence. One reason is lack of consensus
on what causes famine and how best to eradicate it. The differences between famine
early warning systems operated by different organizations indicate this lack
of consensus. The danger is that different international and national systems
disagree about whether famine is imminent, delaying response. My hypotheses are:
1) the politics of these
systems and competition between them influence their design, and 2) this impairs
their ability to detect famines. I examine these through interview and archival
data to be collected in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Rome, Italy.
Susana
Ferreira
Hometown: Pamplona, Spain
Graduate Department: Economics, UC San Diego
When I was a kid, my mother would react to overturned Spanish fruit and vegetable
trucks on the French border by boycotting French products. More recently, we have been witnesses to
violent antiglobalization protests in Seattle, suggesting that there may be losers in the current
globalization trend. My research looks at the conditions under which the environment may be one of the
losers in trade liberalization.
Goals: My goal is to graduate by June 2004 and develop my career as a
researcher in institutions such as the World Bank or the Inter-American Development Bank, or in
academia, combining research with instruction.
Dissertation title: Three Essays on Development and Deforestation
Abstract: Deforestation in developing countries is often cited as a leading
indicator of the perverse effects of increasing international trade. The work
proposed addresses the linkage between international trade and deforestation
from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. A dynamic theoretical model
is proposed which will facilitate an investigation into the channels through
which trade liberalization may enhance deforestation, given the institutional
setting of the economy. This model will be used to look at a variety of policy
alternatives (e.g., quantitative restrictions on timber harvests and taxes) that
might influence the rate of deforestation under different international trade
conditions. The dissertation's second part will be empirical. A key aspect of
this work is to "clean" the UN FAO deforestation data to get a reliable panel
data set. That data set will then be used to validate the theoretical model by
testing its dynamic implications and its comparative static's predictions using
modern panel data estimation techniques.
Steven
Jackson
Hometown: Sault Sainte Marie, Ontario
Graduate Department: Communication, UC San Diego
I first became interested in global conflict and cooperation issues while working as a
development volunteer in Indonesia in the mid-1990s. This interest was deepened through working and
researching in South Korea and Malaysia, and while completing graduate work in international political
economy at Carleton University in Ottawa.
Goals: I hope to continue researching, writing, and teaching in the areas of
international development and conflict, with an emphasis on issues of global science and technology.
Dissertation title: Building Environmental Information Infrastructures in the
U.S.–Mexico Border Region
Abstract: This study examines current efforts to construct environmental
information networks in the California-Baja California border region, built around
an emerging synthesis of computer-based geographic information, database, and
networked communication technologies. Drawing on a combination of interview,
ethnographic, design and content analyses, the study examines how these technologies
have been taken up by the various participants in cross-border environmental debates.
In particular, I argue that environmental information networks have come to play an
increasingly central role in mediating flows of knowledge and power among scientists,
policymakers and civil society groups throughout the border region—raising
questions of network design and use from purely technical matters to more properly
social and political concerns. In this sense, regimes of environmental governance
must be thought of as both social and technical phenomena.
Setsuko Matsuzawa
Hometown: Tokyo, Japan
Graduate Department: Sociology, UC San Diego
I was studying environmental issues in Yunnan, a southwestern province of China, when
I noticed how many environmental projects were being jointly undertaken by global, regional, and local
actors. I became curious about the possible policy conflicts and the potential for positive or negative
cooperation between these actors.
Goals: An academic career in teaching and in basic and applied research in the
field of sociology, with a regional focus on East Asia, especially China.
Dissertation title: Negotiating the Environment: The Transnational Politics of
Environmentalism in China
Abstract: My project would explore the roles that global actors—such
as bilateral aid agencies, philanthropic organizations, and international nongovernmental
organizations—play in regional environmental
politics in China. Environmental projects in Yunnan, Southwest China, make for
great research sites to examine the degree of policy conflict and cooperation
between global actors and Chinese actors—including
the provincial government, local governments, and a Chinese environmental NGO.
Currently, the social movement and international
relations literatures make no reference to the politics of environmentalism in
China. My research would contribute to both literatures by assessing how global
actors: (1) aid local environmental projects; (2) provide more opportunities—including
joint
opportunities—to implement environmental projects; and (3) transmit Western
discourse on the environment to local actors. The project would build on my
preliminary research in China in 2001 and 2002. Archival research, in-depth interviews,
and
participant observation would be conducted in Yunnan.
Kyriaki Papageorgiou
Hometown: Larnaca, Cyprus
Graduate Department: Anthropology, UC Irvine
Growing up in Cyprus, a country divided in two by war and ethnic conflict, first
stimulated my interest in exploring questions surrounding nationalism and identity politics. My interest
in global conflict and cooperation has now expanded to include issues of food security and economic
development.
Goals: After receiving my Ph.D., I want to pursue an academic career in the field
of cultural anthropology.
Dissertation title: Seeds of Doubt: An Ethnographic Investigation of Biosafety
in Contemporary Egypt
Abstract: Prompted by the recent food aid crisis caused by the refusal of several countries in Africa to accept food that has been genetically modified,
this research seeks to investigate contending assumptions and arguments about biosafety and genetically modified organisms. Drawing on preliminary fieldwork in Egypt,
a developing country that is heavily impacted by U.S. and EU policies and politics, this project seeks to understand the complex negotiations between national and
international interests that inform the science of biosafety. Spending nine months
of concentrated research in three key institutes in Cairo, interviewing and conducting surveys with the scientists, and collecting and analyzing scientific
and policy documents, my study will provide in-depth knowledge about the
epistemological challenges of assessing
biosafety. It will also give insights into the complex set of issues surrounding
agricultural biotechnology and contribute to studies on food security in the developing
world.
Maya Ponte
Hometown: Chelsea, Michigan
Graduate Department: Medical Anthropology, UC San Francisco/UC Berkeley joint program
I have always been interested in how people from different cultures
view scientific and political issues. When I
realized that anthropology was a discipline that would allow me to study
this topic through an on-the-ground methodology, I was extremely excited.
Goals: A career in academia.
Dissertation title: Transnational Response to a Novel Epidemic: Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy in the United States and United Kingdom
Abstract: I am investigating the means by which British and American scientists and regulators
produce knowledge about and manage the transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, including BSE, CJD, vCJD, and CWD. I focus on
drawing out similarities and differences in risk perception and risk management between the two nations, as well as analyzing the ways
in which scientific and policy information is communicated and exchanged
between them.
Edith Replogle Sheffer
Hometown: Chicago, Illinois
Graduate Department: Department of History, UC Berkeley
Extensive travel as an undergraduate and research for my senior thesis stimulated my
interest in international conflict and cooperation. I built upon this interest in how
international conflict affects the everyday by spending a year in Russia on a
Rockefeller Fellowship researching the resettlement of Volga Germans during World War II
and their relations with Germany and Russia today.
Goals: I would like to remain in academia, teaching/reading/writing at a university.
Dissertation title: Burned Bridge: Defining East and West Germany in the Borderland Since 1945
Abstract: My dissertation examines the separation of two neighboring
cities by the East-West German border from 1945–89 and their contentious relations
in the decade since reunification. The twin cities
(Sonneberg and Neustadt bei Coburg) comprise the largest population outside
of Berlin that was separated by the inter-German border and were remarkably
similar and intertwined prior to 1945.
This study is unique in viewing the entire lifetime of a border's construction,
maintenance, and dissolution from both sides in a region that had been both
cohesive and homogeneous.
Exploring the interaction between global dynamics and local processes
in the Cold War, this project outlines the process whereby an externally imposed
border was transformed into an enduring social
boundary. Ultimately, this work can shed light on current problems of
German reunification by recasting the Cold War as a history of interaction,
rather than isolation, of East and West.
Susan A.
Shepler
Hometown: Santa Maria, California
Graduate Department: Social and Cultural Studies in Education, UC Berkeley
I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Sierra Leone before the civil war there.
I knew I wanted to be involved in understanding the causes of that war, and
especially the rehabilitation and reintegration
of child soldiers.
Goals: I hope to conduct longitudinal research on the child soldiers
I worked with to understand the long-term effects of participation in violence.
Dissertation title: Contested Childhoods: Fighting Over Child Soldiers
in Sierra Leone
Abstract: One aspect of the war in Sierra Leone that has fascinated
observers is the prevalence of so-called child soldiers on all sides of the
conflict. A
fine-grained understanding of how the category child soldier is made in everyday
practice can contribute towards better peace-building efforts. Through in-depth
qualitative research at rehabilitation centers for ex-child soldiers and in
the
communities where they are re-integrating, I examine how the category of child
soldier and changing notions of youth make possible practices of forgiveness,
create new tensions around access to education, and harden the boundaries of
existing
political factions. It is important to situate a study of child soldiering
and its aftermath within a historical and socio-cultural framework, one that
engages with new
ideas about the social construction of childhood, and also with new anthropology
of violence.
Katrin Elizabeth Sjursen
Hometown: Old Lyme, Connecticut
Graduate Department: History, UC Santa Barbara
I came to global conflict and cooperation issues by way of gender studies, when I
discovered that a medieval noblewoman led armed troops against men besieging her castle. More
research revealed that women have a long history of participation in warfare—and not just on a
local or defensive level. Women actively negotiated truces and alliances with foreign powers long
before the twentieth century.
Goals: I would like to teach history at the college level.
Dissertation title: Local Conflicts, International Players: French Noblewomen's
Involvement in Medieval Warfare
Abstract: While many scholars have mined history for examples of female
combatants, few have examined the women's methods or analyzed the reactions of
their contemporaries. I have found that medieval noblewomen actively participated
in
armed conflicts by leading armies, making alliances, and negotiating treaties—all
methods employed by their male counterparts. The presence (and positive reception)
of warring women in the middle ages, a time most often known for its misogyny,
should cause us to question whether we have similarly overlooked instances of
women's participation in global affairs in other time periods or whether the
middle ages provided a unique opportunity for women. A combination of statistical
analysis and examination of literary and artistic representations of such women
will allow me to plot their frequency over a period of 500 years and to investigate
the reception of their contemporaries.
Jana von
Stein
Hometown: San Luis Obispo, California
Graduate Department:Political Science, UC Los Angeles
Studying and working abroad initially sparked my interest in global cooperation issues,
as did hands-on experience as in intern for the U.S. State Department. Involvement in a number of
research projects on international cooperation has intensified my interest in the topic.
Goals: I hope to be a professor of political science. I also hope to be active in
U.S. foreign policy.
Dissertation title: Partisan Politics and Compliance with the International
Monetary Fund Treaty
Abstract: Central to recent debates among scholars of international relations and international law is the question of whether international agreements and the institutions they create are only a reflection of states’ preferences, or whether they can also subsequently constrain states so as to alter their pursuit of a particular course of action. My dissertation examines this critical yet unresolved question, examining compliance with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) treaty. Of particular interest to the dissertation is how changes in the partisan composition of government affect compliance with agreements signed by previous governments. I will examine patterns of compliance with numerous aspects of the IMF treaty.
Zdravka P. Tzankova
Hometown: Sofia, Bulgaria
Graduate Department: Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, UC
Berkeley
My interest in issues of global conflict and cooperation developed in
the context of my evolving work on contemporary environmental and resource
problems. Questions about the drivers of
and constraints on global and transnational environmental coordination and cooperation,
and especially related questions about domestic–international linkages in
the process of environmental decision
making and environmental policy formulation, remain central to much of my thinking
and research.
Goals: I would like to combine analytical work and research with first-hand
professional involvement in the design of frameworks, approaches, and strategies for addressing
complex environmental problems across the numerous political and jurisdictional contexts where they
unfold.
Dissertation title: Science, Politics, and Institutions in the Development of
Problem Perceptions, Policy Goals, and Management Philosophies for the Global Problem of Biological
Invasions
Abstract: The human-mediated transfer of nonindigenous species is resulting
in a process of biological invasion that poses unprecedented threats to the diversity
and integrity of ecosystems worldwide. Yet, while the scientific understanding
of invasions and their role as major component of global change continues to
grow, policy attention to the problem is lagging behind. Given the quintessentially
transboundary character of bioinvasions, any meaningful long-term response calls
for international coordination with respect to problem definitions, policy goals,
and implementation strategies. Building on a dynamic understanding of policy
development, drawing on political science and policy scholarship on agenda setting,
policy formation, and international cooperation, and using extensive open-ended
interviews with scientists and decision makers, as well as content analysis of
scientific and legal/ policy documents, my research sets out to explain the knowledge-action
gap in our current approach to bioinvasions, as well as to analyze the future
prospects for an internationally coordinated policy response commensurate with
the problem's magnitude and significance.
Zdravka P. Tzankova