Call for proposals: 2007-2008 Human Security Graduate Student Research Fellowships

The Center for Unconventional Security Affairs (CUSA) is pleased to announce a call for proposals for two research fellowships: (1) The Heather Mills McCartney Graduate Fellowship in Human Security, and (2) The Coalition Advocating Human Security Fellowships in Human Security.

For more information about the call for proposals for Human Security Graduate Student Research Fellowships, please follow this link.

- Human Security Graduate Fellowships -

Heather Mills McCartney Graduate Fellowship in Human Security

• Dina Giannikopoulos

• Ted Gaulin

• Andrea Ballestero

Coalition Advocating Human Security Fellowship

• Heather D. Goldsworthy

• Daniel Wehrenfennig

• Samantha Lane

• P. Brian Fisher

• Brennan Davis, Jui Ramaprasad, and Renee Rottner

• Bryan C. Semaan

Heather Mills McCartney Graduate Fellowship in Human Security

Established in honor of the significant contributions to human security issues made by Heather Mills McCartney, this fellowship will allow graduate students to undertake original research on pressing security issues, and allow them opportunities to use their research to help address real world challenges. This fellowship will provide the resources to attract the best and brightest students to UCI, and enable CUSA to help prepare the next generation of business, policy, and academic leaders for the challenges they will face.

- 2005 - 2006 -

Disability and Poverty Alleviation: A Cambodian Case Study

Dina Giannikopoulos

Richard Matthew, Heather Mills McCartney, Zainab Salbi and Dean Ron Huff present Dina Giannikopoulos with the Heather Mills McCartney Graduate Fellowship in Human Security at CUSA's second Human Security Summit in November 2005.

Since receiving the Heather Mills McCartney Graduate Fellowship in Human Security in November 2005, Dina Giannikopoulos has further developed her dissertation project which examines the promotion of poverty reduction strategies among marginalized populations in Cambodia. Her case study focuses on the social and economic impacts of employment in the garment industry among impoverished women and disabled communities in the vicinity of Phnom Penh. She recently returned from an intensive summer research trip to the region, where she devised her methodology and laid the groundwork for a year-long data gathering trip in 2007. In addition, under the guidance of industry experts at Los Angeles’ Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, Dina is researching the profitability of alternative business models which will promote more equitable standards in the production of clothing, and will use these findings to bolster the implications of her dissertation research. Her future goals are to assist developing countries to improve labor conditions while increasing their capacity to compete in the global marketplace, thus enhancing the security of those whose livelihoods are dependant on the garment industry.

- 2006 - 2007 -

Human Security and Climate Change in Western Sudan: An Interdisciplinary Study of the Conflict in Darfur

Ted Gaulin

Heather Mills McCartney and CUSA DIrector Richard Matthew present Ted Gaulin with the Heather Mills McCartney Graduate Fellowship in Human Security at CUSA's third Human Security Summit in October 2006.

While there has been considerable debate in the scholarly and policy community on the precise meaning of the term human security, most academic researchers and policymakers would agree that the people of western Sudan have, in recent years, lived a life of great insecurity. In a mere two years, the conflict in the Darfur region has led to the death of 300,000 people and the displacement of more than 1.5 million. A recent cease-fire between Khartoum and some of the Darfur rebel groups and the deployment of an international peacekeeping force has done little to alleviate the human suffering. My research asks how this conflict arose. The most widely accepted explanation is that it is an ethno-political clash in which the Sudanese military and government-sponsored militias seek to destroy non-Arab rebel groups and their supporters. This is certainly an apt description of Khartoum’s long-standing civil war with the people of southern Sudan, but to what extent does it capture the socio-political dynamics behind the Darfur conflict? My preliminary research suggests that this explanation captures only part of the picture. In particular, it neglects the larger social and environmental conditions in which the conflict has taken place. With this fellowship, Ted will undertake fieldwork in Sudan to get a better sense of the movement of peoples, the environmental challenges Darfurians face, and how they might be adapting to these challenges.

- 2007 -2008 -
 

Translating the human right to water: Pro-poor prices, water security, and collaboration in the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica

Andrea Ballestero
 

There has been extensive scholarship that reviews the negative and positive consequences of the last 20 years of water privatization schemes in the developing world. However, very little is known about how countries are adopting the human rights rationale for water and how they are transforming their administrative, legal, and economic structures to attend to this mandate. This research aims to fill that gap by documenting the concrete mechanisms that Costa Rica is using and by analyzing the specific consequences of water privatization on a rural community in one of the poorest regions of the Costa Rica.
 

The Coalition Advocating Human Security Fellowship

CUSA’s Coalition Advocating Human Security (CAHS) Fellowship program was created in 2005. CAHS fellows will advance its mission of promoting research, education, public awareness, and evidence based policy making to address urgent cases of vulnerability linked to global changes that impact the lives of individuals, communities, and nations.

- 2005 - 2006 CAHS Fellows -

CAHS co-chair's Sandi Jackson and Susan Samueli and Heather Mills McCartney present Heather Goldsworthy with a Coalition Advocating Human Security Fellowship at CUSA's second Human Security Summit in November 2005.

Environmental Change and Forced Displacement in Bangladesh: Implications for Peace and Conflict

Heather D. Goldsworthy

Since receiving the CAHS Fellowship in Fall 2005, I have completed my graduate emphasis in Feminist Studies, and written and defended my dissertation proposal for a project on microfinance and its impacts on the natural environment, and advanced to PhD candidacy. I have secured funding for the first phases of my dissertation project, including my current period of residence in Washington, D.C. I am currently a graduate fellow of the University of California DC program, working as a teaching assistant and beginning my own research. In D.C. this Fall I am conducting interviews with microfinance professionals and reviewing archived case files for analysis.

Communication and Human Security: New Opportunities and Challenges in the Network Society

Daniel Wehrenfennig

In times of material power politics, with economic interests and military power dominating world politics and deciding over war and peace, is dialogue a viable option for conflict resolution in the present? Or does it only work when small disagreements are present but not for serious issues, like longstanding conflicts in segregated societies. Thirty years ago, the conflicts in Northern Ireland and Israel/Palestine were both viewed as “unsolvable”. Both were very complex, based on longstanding historic divisions, supported by diverging religious beliefs, built on a history of violence and fostered by a relatively segregated environment. In both cases, it was believed that talk between the sides has been going on for centuries about the issues without any success or change. However, today the effective dialogue process in Northern Ireland is believed to be one of the key components of the successful peace process, while the lack of this element in the Israel/Palestine context is seen as critical. So what made the dialogue process in Northern Ireland successful? Despite the differences between the cases is there something to be learned for the Israel/Palestine context? To find an answer to this question, I conducted a series of interviews first in Northern Ireland last summer and then in Israel/Palestine this summer. These interviews were conducted with participants and organizers of various dialogue processes (formal and informal) from all the different areas of society on both sides, including politics, civil society, faith communities, grassroots and ordinary citizens. In these interviews, I tried to get a better understanding of the dialogue processes in both conflicts and their similarities and differences as well as their relative importance.

- 2006 - 2007 CAHS Fellows -

Justice, Reconciliation and the Law: A Study of Women Survivors of the Genocide in Rwanda

Samantha Lane

CAHS co-chair Sandi Jackson presents Samantha Lane with a Coalition Advocating Human Security Fellowship at CUSA's third Human Security Summit in October 2006.

The power of law, legal consciousness and the capacity for justice in daily life are of major concern in the reconciliation process for Rwanda. In 1994, between April and July, an estimated 800,000 Rwandans were killed by their fellow countrymen. Mass participation in this extermination campaign against the Tutsi and Hutu sympathizers is not the only shocking feature of this genocide; hundreds of thousands of women were repeatedly raped and sexually brutalized, and many of them died from related wounds, infections, and physical trauma. There were numerous legal protections in place that failed —local/customary, and national legal regimes in addition to the better known international human rights laws. In the years following the genocide, the international community responded by establishing an International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to prosecute those most responsible for organizing the genocide. Additionally, close to 10,000 Gacaca courts have been established throughout Rwanda to help with reconciliation. These legal responses, however, have been criticized and questioned for their capacity to provide justice to survivors. Samantha will use this fellowship to help fund field research in Rwanda to explore the extent to which the law has or has not been successful in addressing justice and reconciliation in Rwanda, particularly for women survivors of sexual assault.

Unequal Power in an Unequal World: Adapting to Climate Change in SIDS

P. Brian Fisher

Heather Mills McCartney Fellowship winners Dina Giannikopoulos and Ted Gaulin with CAHS Fellowship Winners Daniel Wehrenfennig and P. Brian Fisher
 

With only a small increase in average global surface temperature to date, the effects of climate change have already had an impact in varying parts of the world and pose serious challenges to even the narrowest conceptions of human security. This project focuses on how climate change imperils human security in vulnerable communities. These cases highlight the unequal positions of the developed countries, which produce the vast majority of carbon contributing directly to climate change, and individuals and communities in developing countries, who disproportionately must to deal with its insidious effects. These cases will abound throughout the world in the next century, from Bangladesh where sea level rise directly threatens 80% of the population, to Peru where deglaciation threatens fresh water supplies, to the African Continent where a one-third decrease in food productivity is projected from climate change. As a result, there is a developing community of the ‘vulnerable’, where climate change threatens human security and well-being at its most fundamental level. To date, there is little connecting ‘vulnerable communities’ in adapting to the effects of climate change, and this project seeks to explore the common ground upon which these communities can build effective legal and political pathways to empowerment, justice and human security at the global level. Specifically, Brian will use the fellowship to examine the impact of climate change in SIDS (Small Island Developing States) of Oceania where climate change has already had devastating effects.
 

- 2007 - 2008 CAHS Fellows -

Microfinance: Balancing Economic and Environmental Sustainability in Rural India

Brennan Davis, Jui Ramaprasad, and Renee Rottner

Microfinance is the practice of providing small loans (often less than $25) to people who lack the assets to secure capital, primarily women and the poor. In developing countries, microfinance has emerged as one of the primary drivers of entrepreneurship. In 2006, The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Muhammad Yunus for his pioneering work on microfinance, a topic that is receiving increased attention by scholars. Despite this increased attention, microfinance practice and scholarship has focused on economic outcomes rather than environmental outcomes. The conventional view holds that economic development is fueled by entrepreneurship, and economic development is at odds with environmental stewardship. This tension is especially keen in emerging economies, where the poor are often dependent on natural resources for their livelihood. In other streams of research, scholars have argued that environmental regulation is beneficial to economic growth, at least in highly developed economies. This project will examine the relationship might between economic and environmental sustainability in the context of a microfinanced community in rural India.

Technology as a Catalyst for Collaboration Resilience

Bryan C. Semaan
 

Recently, people across the globe have experienced events that have disrupted their lives. These events range from natural disasters to war, such as: Hurricane Katrina, the tsunami in the Bay of Bengal, 9-11, the Israel-Lebanon war, and the invasion of Iraq. Disruptions, when occurring over a prolonged period of time, force people to adapt by forming new personal and work routines in an attempt to salvage the normal aspects of their lives. While organizations may have plans in place to deal with environmental disruptions, little attention has been given to the way in which the human infrastructure can be repaired. Human infrastructure “consists of the highly dynamic patterns of relationships of people in various networks and social arrangements.” We would like to better understand the ways in which people use technology to re-orient their human infrastructure, as the human infrastructure is intricately interwoven with technological infrastructures. This project will look at Israelis who experienced the recent Israel-Lebanon war in order to better understand the ways in which people make use of information technology in order to work and live in disrupted environments.
 

To learn how you can become a supporter of our programs and fellowships, please contact us.

Center for Unconventional Security Affairs
University of California, Irvine
School of Social Ecology
Irvine, CA 92697-7075
Phone: (949) 824-9670
E-mail: cusa@uci.edu