Monday Seminar: Mark Massoud, Nov. 5

Oct 052012
 
 October 5, 2012

Aid Agencies, Bureaucracy, and the New Legalism in South Sudan: From Civil War to Spreadsheets

Mark Massoud, Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics and Legal Studies Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, will be speaking November 5th as part of the Monday Seminar Series from 12:00-1:30 in room 101, West Duke Building.

Legal scholars and policymakers studying the development of law in post-conflict settings have focused largely on the role of state institutions, particularly courts. This emphasis on state-produced law has detracted from an examination of the variety of non-state actors and institutions that contribute to the development of legal order in post-conflict settings and weak states. Based on literature in public law and organizational behavior, as well as field research in South Sudan, Massoud argues that international aid groups impose legal norms related to corporate behavior on the local organizations they fund and local people they hire. Civil society actors in South Sudan experience the power of law, not through the courts, but through their tangible and daily contact with aid agencies. These actors are subject to contracts and other rules of employment, work under management and finance teams, document routine activity, and abide by organizational constitutions. In analyzing how South Sudanese activists confront, understand, conform to, and resist these externally imposed legal rules, Massoud exposes how aid organizations themselves become significant sites of legal and political struggle in post-conflict settings.

Massoud’s research focuses on law in authoritarian and war-torn states. He is currently completing a book tentatively titled, Fragile State of Law: Colonial, Authoritarian, and Humanitarian Legal Politics in Sudan (under contract, Cambridge University Press), and his work on rights in authoritarian regimes appeared in Law & Society Review (2011). Previously, he taught law at McGill University and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University.

Nowhere People photography exhibit up through April

Sep 302012
 
 September 30, 2012

A traveling exhibition of photography capturing the plight of stateless people will be on view in the halls of the Kenan Institute for Ethics in the West Duke Building November 1 – March 31.

Over the past five years, photographer Greg Constantine has been working to bring to light the stories of stateless people around the world and give a human face to this global issue. Nowhere People reveals the impact of statelessness on people and communities who find themselves excluded from society by forces beyond their control. The project serves as a reminder of the existence of the millions of stateless people who are hidden and forgotten around the world. Constantine received three grants from the United Nations High Council on Refugees in order to complete this important project.

Photographs from the Nowhere People series have received the Society of Publishers in Asia Award, Days Japan Special Jury Prize, the Human Rights Press Award, and were shortlisted for the Amnesty International Media Award
for Photojournalism. His first book, Kenya’s Nubians: Then & Now was published in 2011 and his second book, Exiled To Nowhere: Burma’s Rohingya was released in June 2012. Both are part of a series of books from his project Nowhere People that aim to highlight the issue of global statelessness.

 

Opening Events

Panel discussion with Greg Constantine
November 1, 5:30 – 7:00 pm
101 West Duke Building

Free and open to the public, featuring:
GREG CONSTANTINE | Photographer
TOM RANKIN | Center for Documentary Studies
JOHN MOSES | Pediatrics/Center for Documentary Studies
CHARITY TOOZE | UNHCR

Reception to follow

For more information, call 660-3033 or email Christine Delp: christine.delp@duke.edu

 

DukeEngage Dublin info session Oct. 22

Sep 282012
 
 September 28, 2012

There will be an information session for DukeEngage Dublin on Monday, Oct. 22 at 6:00 pm at the Smith Warehouse, Classroom B252 (Bay 7).

During their two months in Dublin students will work in organizations either directed by migrants to Ireland, focused on the needs of refugee and migrant communities, or involved in developing innovative community based educational and cultural programs that bring migrants and native born Irish together in meaningful ways. DukeEngage students will be placed with one of more than seven different NGOs engaged in this work. The objective in each placement is not just to serve but to undertake something that could not have happened without the Duke students’ leadership and participation.

Applications for the DukeEngage Dublin program need to be submitted by noon on Tuesday, November 6 at noon.

Tori Hogan book talk and signing Oct. 18

Sep 272012
 
 September 27, 2012

Author, filmmaker, humanitarian, and Duke alumna Tori Hogan returns to campus to discuss Beyond Good Intentions: A Journey Into the Realities of International Aid, a book based on her National Geographic Explorer film series of the same name.

Hogan, who went to work in international development after graduating from Duke in 2004, soon became uncomfortable with some of the challenges and failures she saw in refugee camps in Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda. She first started Beyond Good Intentions as an educational organization in 2006, and has since gone on to direct her film series and write.

Hogan was most recently at Duke as a panelist in the KIE-sponsored 2012 Winter Forum, entitled Refugees, Rights, Resettlement. This book launch is being hosted by the Duke Human Rights Center at the Kenan Institute for Ethics.

Thursday, October 18, 7pm
101 West Duke Building
Reception to follow – refreshments will be served
Books will be available for purchase

Monday Seminar: Melanie McDermott, Sept. 24th

Aug 192012
 
 August 19, 2012

Examining Equity: A Multidimensional Framework for Assessing Equity in Payments for Ecosystem Services

Melanie McDermott, Associate Director of the Rutgers Initiative on Climate and Society at Rutgers University, will be speaking September 24th as part of the Monday Seminar Series from 12:00-1:30 in room 101, West Duke Building. This talk is part of the Environmental Justice Initiative in collaboration with Nicholas School of the Environment.

Melanie McDermott is a research assistant professor in the Human Ecology department and the associate director of the Rutgers Initiative on Climate and Society. With degrees in interdisciplinary social science (B.A., Harvard; Ph.D., Berkeley) and forestry (M.Sc. Oxford), she has over 20 years’ experience in the U.S., Asia, Southern Africa, and the Caribbean in research, policy analysis, and consulting.  Her work has pursued a number of related themes: the social impacts of climate change mitigation and adaptation; the political ecology of natural resource management, with an emphasis on community forestry; indigenous land rights; gender; non-timber forest products and agroforestry; sprawl, green spaces, and urban forestry; and environmental risk communication. A focus on social equity crosscuts this diverse field. At a more theoretical level, she investigates how the causes and consequences of peoples’ resource-use practices are shaped by environmental factors and social relations of power, difference and identity operating across multiple scales.

Student Open House August 31st

Aug 072012
 
 August 7, 2012

The Institute welcomes students to campus with an open house from 3pm to 5pm on Friday, August 31st. Come join us for cupcakes and conversation as we gear up for the new year! The event will be held in Room 101 in the West Duke Building, across the hall from the main office of the Kenan Institute for Ethics.

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