Read the latest research from our department
Our faculty pride themselves on their ability to pivot in response to changing circumstances, and the way that they stay abreast of the latest developments around the world.
For example, Yvonne Braun has already published research responding to the COVID-19 pandemic in a book chapter, The Human Right to Water and Sanitation in the Age of COVID-19 via Cambridge University Press.
Read more about recently published research below.
Life in a Cambodian Orphanage: A Childhood Journey for New Opportunities, 2021, Rutgers University Press
Kathie Carpenter, associate professor of Global Studies
What is it like to grow up in an orphanage? What do residents themselves have to say about their experiences? Are there ways that orphanages can be designed to meet children's developmental needs and to provide them with necessities they are unable to receive in their home communities? In this book, detailed observations of children's daily life in a Cambodian orphanage are combined with follow-up interviews of the same children after they have grown and left the orphanage. Their thoughtful reflections show that the quality of care children receive is more important for their well-being than the site in which they receive it. Life in a Cambodian Orphanage situates orphanages within the social and political history of Cambodia, and shows that orphanages need not always be considered bleak sites of deprivation and despair. It suggests best practices for caring for vulnerable children regardless of the setting in which they are living.
Access the book via Rutgers University Press.
Countering Violent Extremism in Pakistan: Local Actions, Local Voices, 2020, Oxford University Press
Anita Weiss, professor of Global Studies
This book identifies and analyzes the impact of the various ways in which local people are responding, taking stands, recapturing their culture, and saying "stop" to the violent extremism that has manifested over the past decade (even longer) in Pakistan. Local groups throughout Pakistan are engaging in various kinds of social negotiations and actions to lessen the violence that has plagued the country since the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan which let loose a barrage of violence that overflowed into its borders. In so many ways, Pakistanis are engaging in powerful actions that transform how people think about their own society, impeding extremists' rants while acting on "envisioning alternative futures."
Access the book via Oxford University Press and visit Anita Weiss's website.
The Political Ecology of Education: Brazil's Landless Workers' Movement and the Politics of Knowledge, 2020, West Virginia University Press, Radical Nature series
David Meek, assistant professor of Global Studies
The Political Ecology of Education examines the opportunities for and constraints on advancing food and sovereignty in the 17 de Abril settlement, a community born out of a massacre of landless Brazilian workers in 1996. Based on immersive fieldwork over the course of seven years, David Meek makes the provocative argument that critical forms of food systems education are integral to agrarian social movements' survival. While the need for critical approaches is especially immediate in the Amazon, Meek's study speaks to the burgeoning attention to food systems education at various educational levels worldwide, from primary to postgraduate programs. His books call us to rethink the politics of the possible within these pedagodgies.
Access the book via West Virginia University Press and watch a recording of a UO Food Studies book talk.
Sugar and Tension- Diabetes and Gender in Modern India, 2018, Rutgers University Press
Lesley Jo Weaver, associate professor of Global Studies
Women in North India are socialized to care for others, so what do they do when they a disease like diabetes that requires intensive self-care? In Sugar and Tension, Lesley Jo Weaver uses women's experiences with diabetes in New Delhi as a lens to explore how gendered roles and expectations are taking shape in contemporary India. Weaver argues that although women's domestic care of others may be at odds with the self-care mandates of biomedically-managed diabetes, these roles nevertheless do important cultural work that may buffer women's mental and physical health by fostering social belonging. Weaver describes how women negotiate the many responsibilities in their lives when chronic disease is at stake. As women weigh their options, the choices they make raise questions about whose priorities should count in domestic, health, and family words. The varied experiences of women illustrate that there are many routes to living well or poorly with diabetes and these are not always the ones canonized in biomedical models of diabetes management.
Access the book via Rutgers University Press and visit Lesley Jo Weaver's website.
Care Across Generations: Solidarity and Sacrifice in Transnational Families, 2017, Stanford University Press
Kristin E. Yarris, associate professor of Global Studies
Care Across Generations takes a close look at grandmother care in Nicaraguan transnational families, examining both the structural and gendered inequalities that motivate migration and caregiving as well as the cultural values that sustain intergenerational care. Kristin E. Yarris broadens the transnational migrant story beyond the parent-child relationship, situating care across generations and embedded within the kin networks in sending countries. Rather than casting the consequences of women's migration in migrant sending countries solely in terms of a "care deficit" Yarris shows how intergenerational reconfigurations of care serve as a resource for the wellbeing of children and other family members who stay behind after transnational migration. Moving our perspective across borders and over generations, Care Across Generations shows the social and moral value of intergenerational care for contemporary transnational families.
Access the book via Stanford University Press.