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Dr.Jasper Ayelazuno, Ph.d 2011; Post-doctoral fellow, International Secretariat for Human Development (ISHD)
I was born to a peasant family in the poorest part of Ghana (northern Ghana, specifically Upper East Region), and was the first in my family to sit in a classroom. I was a police officer in Ghana for ten years, worked with the UN peacekeeping missions in Bosnia and Kosovo for a year each; I also had a stint as an Investigator with the Ghana National Reconciliation Commission, set up in 2002 to investigate human rights abuses by former military regimes in Ghana. For my MA, I went to the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex, from where I graduated with Distinction. My doctoral dissertation tries to understand the puzzling political behaviour, and the broader questions about the nature of agency of subaltern classes in Ghana at this historical conjuncture of neo-liberal globalization. The 'subaltern(s)' in Ghana have consistently voted to power the two parties that have embraced and implemented the austerity and free market policies of the IMF/World Bank. This, despite the fact that these free market policies have led to the deterioration of the material and social living conditions of the majority. Thus what is conceptualised in this study (following Hannah Arendt) as the social question is left unresolved in Ghana, just as it is in most countries in the global South (and even in the global North, for those at the lower echelons of these societies). The paradoxical behaviour of the subalterns in Ghana is not a rarity in Africa, and even beyond. For example, the ANC has since the end of Apartheid in South Africa won all the presidential elections in that country, despite what many see as its betrayal of the dreams of the anti-apartheid struggle. Yet there is a plethora of literature telling us that the subaltern classes are resisting neoliberalism. How do we understand the paradoxical behaviour of the subalterns in Ghana, and beyond? For example, why did the subalterns in my village and one other neighbouring village fight over the name of the only clinic in the area rather mobilising collectively to resist the introduction of health user-fees (“cash-and-carry”) in Ghana? Why do they resist certain injustices sometimes and endure others most of the time? What accounts for the different political actions of the subalterns in Ghana and Bolivia in the wake of neo-liberalism? My underlying proposition is that, the political agency of the subalterns is contingent on social contextual and historical variables.
 Bikrum
Gill, Ph.d II
Master Research paper title: Agrarian Crisis
in
India
: Processes of “Accumulation by Dispossession”
Working through David Harvey’s theory of the ‘new’
imperialism, one that identifies processes of ‘accumulation by
dispossession’ as the central constituting element of contemporary
imperialism, my masters research paper attempts to explore and
elucidate the links between the new imperialism, neo-liberal
economic reforms, and the deepening agrarian crisis in India.
I first argue that the premise for such an exploration can be found
in the central role that the social (dis)organization of agrarian
relations in the South have historically played in the struggle
between imperialist and anti-imperialist forces. Central to
the anti-colonial struggle in
India
were questions of land reform and food self-sufficiency that sought
to overturn the regressive property regimes and gross misuse of
agricultural resources that were constitutive of colonial rule.
While the national developmental state that was born out of
the anti-colonial struggle was beset by various contradictions,
primary agricultural producers were nonetheless able to secure
significant social protections through publicly managed
institutions. I argue that India’s much celebrated
structural adjustment from developmental state to neo-liberal state
has in practice provided policy mechanisms – namely privatization,
financialization, state withdrawal, liberalized trade – that have
allowed multinational and domestic agribusiness corporations to
engage in predatory forms of ‘primitive’ accumulation through
dispossessing agrarian communities of control over knowledge
(through the intellectual property rights regime), resources, and
public institutions which are integral to their security of
livelihood.
 Jacqueline
Medalye
Dissertation topic:
International Political Economy of Climate Change Adaptation
My research interests are in global environmental
politics. Specifically, I am interested in examining the
political and social challenges adaptation to climate change will
present to the international community. I hope to model the social
and political variables involved in adaptation policy using a
critical theoretical framework. I would like to study the
political economy of adaptation with a focus on comparing countries
with the same vulnerabilities to climate change but varying levels
of human development. In doing so, I hope that my research
will address the social and political inequalities climate change
adaptation presents to the international system. I aspire that this
research can contribute to our understanding of the political
economic dimensions of climate change policy in order to improve
planning at the international and national level.
 Dr. Sarah Macharia, Ph.d 2008
Dissertation title: The urban ‘informal economy’ in the Global South: A feminist postempiricist
study of policy discourse in sub-Saharan Africa with a special focus on streetvending in Kenya
I apply a policy analysis framework that underscores the systematic interrogation of policy discourse that more often than not remains
unproblematized in conventional policy analysis. Informed by a comparative case
study of Nairobi and Durban City, I explore the gendered impact of different
forms of policy discourse on the ‘informal’ economy. Are there gender
disparities among informal workers in interpreting policy statements and
action? Are policy makers’ agendas skewed towards certain gender interests
over others? In the rigidly neoliberal governance context that is characteristic of most of sub-Saharan Africa, how can the gendering of work and
workers intensified by mainstream economic policy be disrupted and radically
altered? Which policy processes should those working in feminized occupations
in the informal economy and particularly women target in order to catalyze and
benefit from supportive state policy in their own right as workers?
 Sadia Naz, Ph.d II, Carleton University
I completed by MA at York and began my doctoral work at Carleton in
Fall 2006. My
Masters research paper (Post 9/11: Exploring
Conflicts in the Global World) was a critique of some
of the major arguments that seek to explain conflicts (e.g.,
religion, poverty, exclusion, underdevelopment, and grievance). It
argued that conflicts should be seen as an outcome of
globalization, the ‘war on terror’ and the ‘anti-poverty’
agenda that has emerged in the aftermath of 9/11, rather than
of 'local' and 'national' failures. My doctoral
work is an extension of my interest in economic globalization and
emerging patterns of power within
Third World, in particular
Pakistan
and
Bangladesh. Pakistan is under
military rule and Bangladesh is being governed by a democratically
elected government. In both cases, there is not only an increased
collusion between civil and military fractions of the governing
elites (among political leadership and the military) but also
resulted in fundamental transformations in the roles of both civil
and military governments. I propose to study this newly emerging dynamics of local governance and
resistance in
Pakistan
and Bangladesh.
 Denise Roman, Ph. D.,
2002; Research Scholar, Center for the Study of Women,
University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and the European Editor of the
feminist journal Women's Studies International
Forum
My dissertation was titled Alterity and Identity: Nation, Gender, and Popular Culture in Post-Communist Romania (Post-Communist Cultural
Studies).
Located at the intersection of a politics of globalization, post-communism, and Eastern European transformation, the dissertation surveyed the particularity of identity construction in the region, focusing on different (yet connected) axes: nation and ethnicity, gender, queer, youth, popular culture, and new consumption patterns in post-communist Romania.
The new domain suggested in the dissertation, “Post-Communist Cultural Studies” (PCCS), responded to a new sensibility in Western social sciences and humanities, a sensibility gained after important decades of civil rights, feminist, queer, and post-colonial movements--all of which have struggled to make their positionality, (sub)culture, or subjectivity visible and politically accepted. From an analytical standpoint, PCCS determines new, dynamic, and historicized ways of analyzing subjectivities previously conceived as essentialist identities. At the same time, from a teleological perspective and in light of its transnational character, PCCS enables the study of new, globalizing political identities, while empowering local subjectivities to voice the specificity of their culture, politics, and society within an increasingly pluralistic, global-local international community.
In a slightly modified version, the dissertation was published as Fragmented Identities: Popular Culture, Sex, and Everyday Life in Postcommunist Romania,
(Lexington Books/Rowman & Littlefield,
2003). It is soon to be published in paperback. See the book's
blog here.
A few authors about Fragmented Identities:
Debra Renee Kaufman, Matthews Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Northeastern University, and author of Rachel's Daughters
'Ms. Roman . . . has written not only an outstanding piece of academic scholarship, but a real 'page turner.'
Catherine Durandin, The National Institute of Oriental Languages and Literatures, Paris
Denise Roman's . . . book should be read as a kind of 'flânerie', expressing the feel of everyday . . . life in post-1989 Romania.
Charles King, Associate Professor of Foreign Service and Government, and holder of the Ion Ratiu Chair of Romanian Studies, Georgetown University,
'[Roman's] walk through . . . one country’s postcommunist experience [is] a smart and often funny example of cultural theory in
action'.
Gordana Rabrenovic, Associate Director, Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict Northeastern University, Boston,
"Denise Roman takes us to an exciting journey through . . . [the] changes Eastern European societies underwent as they emerged from communism.'
 Carlos
Torchia
Dissertation
title : The Incomplete Democratic
Consolidation in Chile: What Have the Poor Gained? In this
dissertation I critically examine the
nature of the 'low
intensity' democracy achieved by the Chilean people since the
inauguration of the first post-Pinochet civilian government in 1991.
I attempt to answer the following research questions: Are
the Chilean poor better off fifteen years after the end of the
military regime? Has “political freedom” brought
“development” to the marginal and oppressed? What is the meaning
that the Chilean poor ascribe to the notion of 'development'? If we
take development to mean the empowerment of collective agents to
transform their social and political reality, then how do we
interpret contemporary Chilean reality? Does the “growth
with equity” strategy of the current governing coalition have the
capacity to reduce poverty in Chile in a significant manner?
 Tina
Virmani
Research
Interests: postcolonial, feminist and gender studies, political
economy, nationalism and identity, the politics of knowledge
production, particularly in relation to the fields of gender and
development and women’s human rights and feminist knowledge
production in India, and the production of consent/complicity to
regimes of power. For my dissertation the question I would like to
explore is: under what conditions and for what purposes is feminist
knowledge produced in different national and regional contexts? The
research will examine the social relations that affect and inform
the use of certain epistemologies and pedagogical practices, the
major debates engaged with, the extent and nature of connections to
local social movements and NGOs, and the transnational connections
that are maintained. Asking questions about how feminist scholars
and students see themselves as contributing to social change, an
important goal will be to further understandings of the role of
universities as a site of both the production of knowledge as well
as of subjectivities. Furthermore, keeping in mind feminist
critiques of: 1) representation of “third world women” as
victims of traditional patriarchal systems and 2) the tokenized
approach of incorporating scholarship about women from the global
South into curriculum in the North, the project will aim to locate
possibilities for trans-border connections that go beyond liberal
pluralist models of accommodating or including different voices.
 Dr. Zubairu
Wai, Ph.d 2010
Research
interests: Politics of knowledge production on Africa; comparative
politics of social transformation: development, globalization and
democracy in the Global South; and discourses of violence, identity
and conflicts in Africa.
Dissertation title: The Politics of Knowledge
Production and Discourse of Violence on Civil Wars: Sierra Leone as
a Challenge to the Dominant Representations of African Conflicts.
My dissertation addresses the problematique of knowledge
production about contemporary African conflicts and seeks to assess
the impact of such knowledges on African societies. Though Africa is
a major site for the production of knowledge about contemporary
conflicts, there remains a significant lacuna in the way these
conflicts are interpreted, theorised and understood. Most studies on
African conflict remain severely flawed in that they
focus only on issues of theories and methods, but avoid the more
fundamental questions of epistemology. My aim is to construct such
an epistemological enquiry and then, propose an alternative
epistemology for understanding African conflicts. Using the civil
war in Sierra Leone as my empirical case, my dissertation seeks to
investigate (a) what is included and what is left out in the
production of knowledge about conflicts in Africa; (b) the
epistemological foundations of the dominant approaches to these
conflicts; the power relations in which they are embedded; the
particular interpretive dispositions they foreground and those they foreclose; and (c) how these produced knowledges
affect the articulation of policy towards Africa. By focusing on
knowledge production, my research addresses a major lacuna in the
literature on African conflicts, and holds signifiicant implications for
understanding the dynamics of contemporary conflicts on
and beyond the continent.
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