Research projects
A broad and exciting research agenda! Some of the issues the School鈥檚 faculty is studying these days:
- Development in other contexts of fragility, violence and conflict (FCV): As a coordinator of the Centre for International Policy Studies鈥 Fragile States Research Network, in 2020-21 Professor Baranyi organized a panel on the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 16 (on peace, justice and institutions) in diverse FCV contexts, as well as a panel on the challenges of peace with justice in Colombia. For a recording of and blogs following the panel on Colombia, click here: . His new publications on these issues are forthcoming in Conflict, Security and Development and in D茅veloppement humain, handicap et changement social. Several uO graduate students are involved in these research and policy engagement activities.
- The World of the Right: Radical Conservatism and International Order. This collaborative SSHRC project investigates the far Right's international agenda and global networks, and the extent to which these represent a challenge to the international liberal order.
- The Return of the Generals? This project focuses on the relationship between security, security assistance and militarism in African countries. It includes a focus on democracy and on changing military relations.
- Effectiveness of International Intervention in Afghanistan. Lessons Learned and Way Ahead for Afghanistan鈥檚 stabilization and development. Policy implications for Canada.
- Canadian engagement in fragile and conflict-affected states/societies: Building on past work including books edited by Tiessen & Baranyi (2017) and Brown et al. (2016), we are collaborating with graduate students to conduct original research on Canada鈥檚 justice and security cooperation with selected partners in the Americas (i.e. in Colombia, Haiti and Jamaica) and how they have been affected by Canada鈥檚 Feminist International Assistance Policy.
- Security and justice reform in Haiti+: Drawing on earlier research into international engagement in fragile states/societies (Desrosiers & Baranyi 2012; Baranyi 2019), we I am working with students to deepen original research on the evolution of security and justice institutions, in Haiti and in other fragile states/societies.
- Revisiting Rwanda鈥檚 First and Second Republics. The project looks at political and administrative structures in Rwanda from 1960 to 1990. It aims to understand power structures at different levels, as well as popular engagement with power.
- Rwanda鈥檚 bilateral aid since the genocide. The project studies policies and practices adopted by six bilateral donors since 1994: Belgium, Canada, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States. It seeks to nuance notions of 鈥榚xceptionalism鈥 with regards to Rwanda鈥檚 foreign aid.
- Gender, Development and Canada鈥檚 Feminist International Assistance Policy. This project examines the nature of gender equality programming and gender mainstreaming strategies in Canada鈥檚 foreign policy and international assistance programs. Particular attention is given to policy and practice related to gender and security and the 鈥榃omen, Peace and Security鈥 initiative.
- Local Knowledge and Peacebuilding: Despite a growing scholarly evidence base and practitioners鈥 own acknowledgement of the importance of using local knowledge and collaborating with national and local partners, most international interventions fail to integrate local knowledge in a meaningful or sustained way. The main research question of this project is, why and by what mechanisms international interventions gather (or fail to gather) local knowledge about their host states. This includes a dual analytical interest in individual behavior as well as organizational-level incentives and disincentives of local knowledge use. The project seeks a) to develop a conceptual understanding of local knowledge and its mechanisms, b) to study empirically the mechanisms of local knowledge use or non-use at the individual and organizational level of analysis.
- Governing Transnational Risks and Resilience in Fragile States: a comparative assessment: This project fills a known gap in the literature by examining how fragile communities across four continents in Africa, East Asia, Latin America, and North America develop resilience strategies to overcome risks.
- Covid and developing countries: This project tries to better understand how the COVID-19 virus has (and continues) to affect developing countries. While the global COVID-19 pandemic is still unfolding in the so-called Western countries (e.g. Canada, USA, Italy, Spain etc.), several virologists and development scholars have already warned about the devastating consequences for the healthcare system in most developing states (e.g. in Africa, Middle East, South America) since the virus has arrived there over the summer. In short, we aim to better understand the particular challenges that developing states face in light of the COVID-19 pandemic both from a conceptual but also practical level.
- Studying Development Practices: The goal of this course is to better understand the 鈥榩ractices鈥 of international development institutions. In recent years a number of scholars have turned to studying practices in international politics, often drawing from the works of Pierre Bourdieu (1977), Ludwig Wittgenstein (1958), and Charles Taylor (1985) that contend 鈥渢hat practices can at once underlie subjects and objects, highlight nonpropositional knowledge, and illuminate the conditions of intelligibility鈥 (Schatzki, 2001: 10). (s.f. Gadinger; Poulliot; Reckwitz etc.).
- Burden sharing (BS) in international institutions: The BS literature clearly lacks a post-positivist perspective (which is able to produce much richer and deeper causal explanations and understandings of state motivations for (or against) sharing burdens than simply treating burden sharing as an outcome. The literature on burden sharing clearly lacks is a bottom-up (inductive) approach that offers much richer and deeper causal explanations and understandings of state motivations for (or against) sharing burdens. The aim of this project is to fill this lacuna鈥攖hat is develop such an inductive program based on a post- positivist (or non- materialistic/social) ontology. This allows us to understand the intersubjective social structures of agents and their value rational motivations for sharing institutional burdens, because it is not merely cost-benefit analyses that determine states鈥 motivations but also societal norms, values, as well as belief and power structures.
- Financing Development. Analysis of challenges related to the financing of development in order to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. The research project focusses on monetary policies, the financial architecture and the efficiency of financial intermediaries (banks and microfinance institutions) within Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU).
- Growth and Development in South Asia: Country Comparative Perspectives. Salient trends of changes in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh in the last ten years, the key drivers of change and reactions/responses of respective governments. What brings the three countries together and what pulls them apart? Implications for Canadian interests and foreign policy.
- Employment Programs in East and South Asia. This is a review of active and passive employment programs in these two regions. It includes an inventory of programs by country, assesses the evaluation evidence on effectiveness, and makes policy recommendations on future directions regarding ALMPs and UI as social protection instruments in Asia.
- Women and Work in the Mekong Region. Using public opinion data collected by Gallup and the ILO, this research explores women鈥檚 experience in the labor market in Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, and Lao.
- Trade and Jobs: Ground Zero in the Struggle between Markets and Social Justice? This research is reviewing some of the central claims that underlie the debate over trade, including whether it has delivered the aggregate benefits posited by conventional economic theory, what its employment impacts have been, and the record of compensating job losers.
- International Investment Agreements, Policy Space and Economic Development. An ongoing research project into the economic and political consequences of international agreements to protect foreign direct investment.
- Institutions and the Local Resource Curse: Political Participation, Distributive Outcomes and Economic Development. We are interested in how local institutions, both public (municipal) and private (company-created), affect mine-community conflict. This SSHRC-funded research (SSHRC Insight Grant, 2017-2022) explicitly considers how local institutions shape the distributional and participative outcomes that contribute to economic development and social mobilization in Argentina, Chile, Peru and Northern Canada.
and - Norms of Engagement: The Micro-politics of Corporate Citizenship in Latin America. This SSHRC research project examines the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on development in terms of how it shapes bargaining between corporate and community representatives at the local level in Argentina and Chile. This project is in the writing-up phase.
- A Critical Review of Bhutan`s Gross National Happiness. The research seeks to deconstruct the notion of Gross National Happiness and reveal its roots as the ideology of nation building in Bhutan.
- Strategic Network on the New National Planning. The number of developing and emerging countries with a national development plan has doubled over the last decade, and many of them are taking these planning exercises very seriously. What does the return of national development planning mean for development policy and practice?
and - Entrepreneurship and Appropriate Technology for Francophone developing countries. Swiss federal applied research program (2016-2020).
- Internationalization of SMEs to Asian Emerging Markets: What Role by Global Cities? A pluri-annual research project in partnership with the Academy of International Business (AIB) and the Europe-Asia Management Studies Association (EAMSA).
- Research and Training program in Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Appropriate Technologies for International Development. Program under construction since September 2016 together with 4 faculties of the University of Ottawa, the VP Research Office, and the Entrepreneurship Hub.
- Public Water for All: Challenges for New Generation Public Services. More than 660 million people around the world do not have access to safe drinking water and 2.4 billion do not have adequate sanitation facilities. The Sustainable Development Goals have set an ambitious target for member countries: to universalize water and sanitation services by 2030. This project investigates the role of public financing in infrastructure development in the water and sanitation sector.
- The Socio-Economic Determinants of Agricultural Models and Development. This research project aims to understand and evaluate the empirical nexus between the socio-economic determinants of agricultural production in developing countries, particularly in West Africa. The research is largely based on data from the World Bank's "Living Standards Measurement Study-Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA)".
- New Information Technologies, Agricultural Change, and the Politics of Knowledge in Africa. Research on the use of mobile phones, in conjunction with radio and other technologies, by smallholder farmers (including women farmers groups) in Tanzania and Malawi. Conducted in conjunction with Farm Radio International, Farm Radio Trust-Malawi, and a researcher from Carleton University. Field research was concluded in 2016 and the project is at the writing-up stage.
- Collaborative Dispute Resolution in the Mining Sector in the Great Lakes Region of Africa. Research on negotiations and collaboration between industrial mining companies, artisanal mining cooperatives, state agencies, and other organizations in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania. Funding provided through the Seed Funding Opportunity (SFO).
- Vers une th茅orisation contextualis茅e et robuste de la transition foresti猫re. Les causes et cons茅quences des transitions foresti猫res (passage de la d茅forestation 脿 la reforestation) demeurent mal comprises. Se basant notamment sur des travaux en Asie du Sud-Est, ce projet vise 脿 contribuer aux efforts de th茅orisation en produisant une explication contextualis茅e et ax茅e sur les acteurs et m茅canismes directement impliqu茅s.
- 鈥淲e will not farm like our parents": Rural-urban Linkages, Livelihoods, and Food Security in Kenya. Cellphone communication and mobile money technologies (mPesa) are changing the relationships between rural households and migrant family members, including gender dynamics and the power relationships between young and old. This SSHRC project (Insight project: 2015-2020) uses multi-sited ethnography to track agrarian and urban-based livelihoods, with particular interest in the diversification of youth livelihoods.
- Driving development? Masculinities and Motor Vehicles in Kenya. Nairobi鈥檚 infamous traffic jams and vehicle-related bloodshed are regularly blamed on the aggressively masculine 鈥渕atatu culture鈥 of minibuses, the growing numbers of private cars, and the proliferation of motorcycle taxis. This project is using ethnographies of drivers, driving practices, and a review of the 鈥渁nti-politics鈥 of Kenyan transport policy.
- Vulnerability of African Livelihoods under Environmental Stresses (VALUES). This SSHRC (Insight project: 2011-13) study assessed perceptions of climate variability relative to other forms of environmental change. Households in the five communities were much more connected to out-migrating members than was expected. Climate claims were understood only within a framework of broader livelihood insecurity, and could not be taken at face value.
- Les implications environnementales et agricoles de la transition agraire dans les pays 茅mergents: le cas de la Tha茂lande
- Water Resource Reallocations and Ethnic Minority Livelihoods in Southwest China. This project aims analyze the drivers, livelihood consequences, and cultural impacts of changes in water availability and allocation for ethnic minority societies in a cross-section of the Red River watershed, Southwest China. Case studies span hydropower expansion, forest and cash crop plantation expansion, riverbed sand dredging and fish farming.
- Disability, governance and development in Haiti. Professor Baranyi鈥檚 current engagement in Haiti is mainly through the Engendering Disability-Inclusive Development project, a seven-year, SSHRC funded partnership directed by Deborah Stienstra at Guelph U. On that basis, we are funding and training the first generation of Haitian researchers working with disabled women鈥檚 organizations -- to advance their struggles for rights and inclusion. In addition, Stephen provides pro bono advice to Global Affairs Canada and blogs regularly on Haiti. Click here for his most recent blog for his most recent blog: .
- Community Mobilization in Crisis. An ongoing collaborative effort by the University of Ottawa and the American University of Beirut to research, develop, and use open-access online learning materials for individuals and communities to hone their skills in collective action (cooperation), coping, and communication.
- Human Trafficking in South Asia. Intra-regional, internal and trans-national human trafficking as threats to development; factors promoting human trafficking and international measures to counter trafficking. Canada鈥檚 role.
- (Dis)ability and international development: Having completed a collaborative project that generated a special issue of Third World Thematics (2017) on this topic, we are supporting the establishment of a (dis)ability studies chair at the Universit茅 d'Etat d'Ha茂ti and are preparing proposals for a new global/comparative research project on this topic.
- Canada`s Development NGOs and Federal Government Funding in Historical and Comparative Perspective. The research asks how dependent Canada鈥檚 development NGOs are on government funding, how they got so dependent, how Canadian NGOs compare to NGOs in other traditional donors, and what this means for the independence of civil society.
- Securitization of Migration and Asylum in Canada: A Comparative Analysis of Policy Consequences and Human Rights Impact. SSHRC Insight Grant (CO-INVESTIGATOR) . This research explores the practical and human rights implications associated with the securitization of irregular migration and asylum in Canada and the European Union.
- On the Move: Employment-Related Geographical Mobility in the Canadian Context.SSHRC Partnership Grant (CO-INVESTIGATOR). Research on employment-related geographical mobility in the Canadian context. Acting as the team leader for research on Employment Standards. Also leading two projects on family rights and employment conditions for migrant workers ( several countries compared)
- Etre ou ne pas 锚tre (un bon) citoyen : The Role of Citizenship Acquisition for Immigrant Integration Trajectories in Canada and France. France-Canada Research Fund (CO-INVESTIGATOR). Research on naturalized citizens' sense of belonging to their country of residence & on their integration trajectories.
- With Strings Attached? Conditional Cash Transfers and Women鈥檚 Empowerment in Bolivia and South Africa, 2016-2019. Funded by a SSHRC Insight Development Grant, this project examines the effects of conditionalities on cash transfers on women鈥檚 empowerment, understood primarily in terms of collective agency. I am particularly interested in understanding how social movement organizations have engaged with these policies, and how this modality of service delivery promotes the financialization of poverty and transforms notions of citizenship.
- Remunicipalization: The Future of Water Services? After three decades of privatization, cities around the world are bringing their water facilities back under public management and control, with major implications for how water and sanitation services may be planned, financed and implemented in the future. This SSHRC-funded project involves an international research team (affiliated with the Municipal Services Project) that will map the challenges and opportunities emerging with remunicipalization in Bulgaria, India, Indonesia, France, Spain and the United States.
- The Career Paths and Employment Outcomes of IDS Graduates in Canada. This study included a survey of 1901 Canadians who had completed an International Development Studies program in Canada. The findings examine job satisfaction, income, skills required, and barriers to employment, etc. This project is funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC).
- Global Citizenship and Learning/Volunteer Abroad. Learning/volunteer abroad programs provide important opportunities for cross-cultural understanding and skills development. This project explores the impact of learning/volunteer abroad programs on the youth participants and the communities and organizations that host them. This project is funded by a SSHRC Partnership Development Grant.
- Improving Maternal, Child Health and Family Planning Services in Rural Nigeria: A Cluster Randomized Control Trial. Nigeria presently has the second highest absolute number of maternal deaths and perinatal deaths (stillbirth and neonatal deaths) in the world. The goal of this project is to reduce maternal and perinatal mortality in Nigeria by strengthening the availability and use of maternal primary health care services by vulnerable women.
- Les pratiques d鈥檈mpowerment et d'茅mancipation des femmes en Inde. Dans le champ du f茅minisme d茅colonial en genre et d茅veloppement, cette recherche porte sur les pratiques de la Self-Employed Women Association (Gujarat, Inde), en prenant en compte leurs compr茅hensions de leurs v茅cus. Actuellement, j'茅tudie les strat茅gies et m茅thodes d'organisation collective des organisations de femmes en p茅riode de confinement et de crise. .
- International development volunteering as a catalyst for long-term prosocial behaviours of returned Canadian volunteers, Citizenship Teaching and Learning, Volume 16, Issue 1 (2021) 31-40 , Katelyn Cassin, Benjamin J. Lough