Two academics at the Global Development Institute promoted to professorships
Johan Oldekop and Maria Rusca 鈥� both academics at the Global Development Institute 鈥� have been made professors, reflecting their significant contributions to the field of Development Studies.
Both and work in and around environmental issues 鈥� testament to the institute鈥檚 robust and growing research into the intersections between environmental justice and global development.
Johan has become Professor in Environment and Development. His research primarily focuses on how different environmental policies and interventions impact people and the environment, including potential trade-offs between conservation and development outcomes.
Johan is involved in an impressive range of pioneering projects designed to improve our understanding of the development challenges bound up with climate change and biodiversity loss. He currently leads the , which explores the effects of reforestation drivers on both forests and rural poverty, and is involved in , a project that asks how Earth Observation data can be used in a socially just way.
Most recently, Johan and a group of colleagues were awarded 拢1.3 million by the Ford Foundation to establish the Observatory for Forests and Just Transitions. This research observatory will study the role land rights play in a just transition to a decarbonised future, with GDI鈥檚 team working alongside co-investigators at the University of Ghana, the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and the Federal University of Par谩 in Brazil.
Maria has become Professor of Water Politics and Development and will build on her extensive work on political ecologies of water and hydroclimatic extremes, critical disaster studies, climate urbanism and experimental political ecologies. Maria is especially interested in interdisciplinary scholarly approaches and has used the medium of film to examine socionatural disasters and societal responses to extreme events. In 2019, she directed 鈥樷��, telling the stories of women and men at the margin of the water supply network and beyond.
Maria鈥檚 recent work explores the role and forms of knowledge needed to address risks related to climate change. Publications include 鈥樷��, which proposes a new framework for generating storylines that advance pathways towards climate-just futures, and 鈥樷��, which lays the foundations of a future-oriented urban political ecology that approaches geographies of climate change experimentally and speculatively.
Professor Sam Hickey, current head of GDI, said:
We鈥檙e delighted with the well-earned promotions awarded to Maria and Johan, both of whom have led pioneering and influential research into pressing environmental issues. With our newly minted professors working on a range of exciting projects, we look forward to seeing their research progress to new heights in the coming years.
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