Africa

Climate change might be fueling ethnic violence. PhD candidate Emily Sample explores why

Mariam Aburdeineh — Fri, 04 Feb 2022 19:49:37 +0000

Climate change might be fueling ethnic violence. PhD candidate Emily Sample explores why Mariam Aburdeineh Fri, 02/04/2022 - 14:49

In This Story

Douglas Irvin-Erickson

Emily Sample. Photo by Shelby Burgess/Strategic Communications/��AV

As a junior and senior at Annandale High School in Virginia, Emily Sample spent her summers as a docent at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. She was a teenager who had just lost a friend to police violence, she said, and joining the museum’s Young Ambassadors Program resonated with her.

“I was fascinated and continue to be fascinated by this highly illogical idea of genocide,” said Sample, a PhD candidate at ��AV’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution.

Since then, Sample has built her career around atrocity prevention. In addition to earning a master’s in human rights and genocide studies from Kingston University London, she has worked as a genocide scholar and educator for Holocaust Museum Houston in Texas. She currently works for the Fund for Peace, where she said she supports their portfolio on human rights and international peacebuilding.

“The best way to prevent genocide is to help make violence not an option,” Sample said, explaining that an “us-versus-them” mentality can develop when people believe there is scarcity of resources, and are manipulated into thinking ethnic violence is an answer.

She’s further studying this at Mason, with a case study in West Nile, Uganda, where she lived and conducted research while enrolled at Kingston. Her dissertation examines structural mass atrocity prevention through the lens of climate change adaptation and gender.

Emily Sample (right) and her research partner Lina Zedriga in Uganda in 2013. Photo provided.

“If we make the climate better, if we empower women and have better access to clean water, then [Ugandans] will not be forced into making decisions about whether or not their family lives and the next family dies,” said Sample, who is interviewing Ugandans over Zoom.

Sample is also looking at the effects of environmental racism, where negative environmental impacts disproportionately affect people of color.

“The day-to-day life of someone in Uganda may be much more impacted [by climate change than a Westerner’s] because they’re having to adjust their farming season, and the type of seeds and livestock they’re buying,” she said.

These impacts have gendered implications, Sample said, as women often tend the gardens, cook, and walk to retrieve water.

Increasing education and environmental justice, such as reparations for environmental racism, while reducing scarcity fears, could alleviate many atrocity issues, she said.

Sample said she came to Mason because she wanted to dive deeper into the genocide prevention field.

“My hometown university has one of the best [conflict resolution] programs in the country,” said Sample, who also works with Mason’s Raphaël Lemkin Genocide Prevention Program.

“The Carter School is extremely unique in how many scholar-practitioners we have,” she said. “They integrate students into their work in unique and really pivotal ways that allow students to become practitioners.”

Though the PhD journey is demanding, Sample said her studies have been worthwhile.

“Every single professor is approachable, interesting and has contributed to me seeing the world in a variety of different ways,” she said.

“Emily is a rising star in genocide studies and conflict resolution, and the nexus of these fields with the practice of peacebuilding,” said Douglas Irvin-Erickson, director of Mason’s Genocide Prevention Program. “She’s a brilliant social analyst with many years of ethnographically informed research experience, and her deeply rooted sense of justice endears her to those with whom she works the closest.”

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Sample conducts interviews for her dissertation virtually. Here, two Ugandan men communicate with her from Africa via Zoom using a smartphone (bottom right). Photo provided.

Topics

Philip Martin

Anonymous — Fri, 02 Oct 2020 22:43:49 +0000

Philip Martin Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 10/02/2020 - 18:43

Assistant Professor

Contact Information

pmarti5@gmu.edu
Fairfax Campus, Aquia Building, Room 307
4400 University Drive
Fairfax, VA 22030
MSN: 3F4

Biography

Philip A. Martin is an assistant professor of international security in the Schar School of Policy and Government at ��AV.

His research specializes in political violence and civil wars, peacebuilding, and African politics. His work has been published in International Security, Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Politics, Journal of Peace Research, African Affairs, Studies in Comparative International Development, and other outlets.

In 2020, Martin was co-awarded (with Giulia Piccolino and Jeremy Speight) the Harry Frank Guggenheim Distinguished Scholar Award for research on armed groups and peacebuilding in Côte d’Ivoire. His research has also received support from the Fulbright Foundation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

He completed his PhD in Political Science in 2019 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was an affiliate of the security studies program.

View Philip Martin's CV

Maurice Kugler

Kelly Hansen — Fri, 02 Oct 2020 22:18:44 +0000

Maurice Kugler Kelly Hansen Fri, 10/02/2020 - 18:18

Professor of Public Policy
Co-Director, Center for Micro-Economic Policy Research (CMEPR)

Contact Information

mkugler@gmu.edu
Mason Square, Van Metre Hall, Room 534
3351 Fairfax Drive
Arlington, VA 22201
MSN: 3B1

Biography

Maurice D. Kugler is a professor of public policy in the Schar School of Policy and Government at ��AV. His research expertise is on the role of new technologies in boosting economic growth and labor productivity (aka endogenous growth theory). His work encompasses analyses of productivity growth, global labor markets, foreign direct investment, global value chains, human capital formation, international trade, and international migration.

Kugler was head of research of the Human Development Report, the UN’s annual flagship publication on international economic development after he was senior economist at the World Bank. Prior, he was Visiting Professor of Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government and Research Fellow at the Growth Lab of the Center for International Development, both in Harvard University (2006-10).

His research has been widely published in top economics academic journals, including the American Economic Review, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Economics Letters, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Public Economics, Review of Economic Dynamics, Review of Economics and Statistics, Review of Economic Studies, and the World Bank Economic Review. This work has been recognized in awards (McTaggart at the London School of Economics and Polticial Science and AEA/FRB at University of California, Berkeley), grants (National Science Foundation, MacArthur Foundation and U.K. Economics and Social Sciences Research Council), and prizes (Global Development Forum and Latin American and Caribbean Economics Association).

Before joining the faculty at Mason, Kugler has taught full time at Universidad de los Andes (Bogota, Colombia), University of Southampton (United Kingdom), Stanford University (Palo Alto, California), Harvard University (Cambridge, Massachusetts), and Wilfrid Laurier University (Waterloo, Ontario). He has been consultant for the World Bank Group (both through the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the International Finance Corporation) and the Inter-American Development Bank, as well as principal investigator for the U.S. Department of Labor.

He earned a PhD in economics at the University of California, Berkeley, under the guidance of Nobel Laureate Paul M. Romer, after getting BSc and MSc degrees in economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

External links

Google Scholar Profile
Profile and Papers at Research Papers in Economics/RePEc
Publications at the National Bureau of Economic Research

View Maurice Kugler's CV

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Areas of Research

Africa
Economic Development
Economic Growth
Economic Policy
Foreign Direct Investment
Human Capital
International Economic Development
International Economics
International Migration
International Trade and Global Labor Markets
Labor Policy
Latin America
Macroeconomics
Political Economy
Quantitative Methods
Regional Development
South Asia
Trade Policy
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