Development Studies Lab

Wednesday, October 28, 2015 10:30 AM to 12:00 PM EDT
B313 (Conference Room)

The SOAN faculty has formed the Development Studies Lab (DSL), a research team of faculty and graduate students seeking to rethink basic concepts, methods, and approaches to development theory and practice. The Lab functions both to develop new knowledge based on conceptually-driven, civically- engaged empirical inquiry and to train graduate students. We also plan to include graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and faculty from other departments at Mason and from abroad. For example, a PhD student from the University of Vienna has applied for a grant from her university to gain further training in development studies at Mason next year. SOAN regularly hosts foreign scholars, and the Lab will provide an intellectual home for these visitors. SOAN has become a center for development studies. On our faculty, Amy Best explores innovative, grassroots food policy in the United States, Johanna Bockman examines international development financing and debt crises, John Dale studies global sustainable development and creative cities policy, Eliz Storelli delves into well-being among Latin America's aging populations, Cortney Hughes Rinker examines new forms of health provision in Morocco and the United States, Mark Jacobs expands our notions of well-being in development theories, Rashmi Sadana explores public transit development policies in India, Anne Schiller is on a Fulbright fellowship now studying community building in Italy, Linda Seligmann examines Peruvian informal markets through ethnography, and Satsuki Takahashi focuses on the impact of disasters on Japanese economic development. Many graduate students seek out SOAN's graduate programs to study development theory and practice both in the United States and around the world.