The Human Development and Capability Association encourages researchers who share common interests to organize thematic groups. At present, eight thematic groups are active. If you are involved in a similar thematic group, or if you would like to start one, please read and complete the following document and hence contact us at info@hd-ca.org. Please know that the thematic groups currently work only in English.

Objectives

Institution: Northern Arizona University, USA

Academic Background:Ph.D Candidate

Specific Research Topic: Water Resources and the Issue of Social Justice: Private vs. Public Sector Management of Water Services

Current Area of Interest: Islamic Fundamentalism, Development, Postcolonial Studies and Political Economy.

Name: Sylvia I. Bergh
E-mail: (replace '+' with '@' before using) sylvia.bergh+worc.ox.ac.uk

Institution: Department of International Development, University of Oxford, UK

Academic background:
My academic background includes a strong focus on the Middle East/North Africa region; having gained an M.A. degree in Arabic and International Relations from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland in 1999,I obtained an M.Phil. in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Oxford in 2001. Before starting the D.Phil., I worked for two years at the World Bank, both in the President’s Office in Washington D.C. and in the Morocco Country Office.

Current area of interest and specific research topic:
I’m a fourth year D. Phil. student in Development Studies at the University of Oxford. My thesis topic is in the area of local governance in Morocco. The thesis is entitled Participation and Decentralization: the Case of Village Associations and Local Government in Morocco’. Hence I’m interested in the capability approach in as far as it links to participatory approaches to development as well as to issues of public action and democracy. I’m also interested in migration issues, and in particular Moroccan migrant associations as a form of ‘transnational’ citizenship.

Name: Francesco Burchi
Email: (replace '+' with '@' before using) fburchi+uniroma3.it

Academic Background :
Degree: M.A. in “Human Development and Food Security”
University: Università degli Studi di Roma Tre, Department of Economics. Date: April 2005. Final certificate: degree cum laude Degree: M.A. in “Economics and Trade” with specialization in “Economics”
University: Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza”. Date: 06/05/2003. Final mark: 110/110

Current studies:
PhD programme in “Institutions, Environment, and Policies for Economic Development.” University: Università degli Studi di Roma Tre, Department of Economics. Date of beginning: November 2004. Date of predicted end: November 2007. Dissertation: “Addressing Education from a Human Development perspective: Does Education for rural people have a significant impact on Food Security?”

Current Area of Interest: Food Security, Education, Poverty Reduction, Quantitative Methods.

Specific research topic: role of education in the capability approach and the specific impact of basic education on food security in rural areas of developing countries.

Name: Mandira Kala
Email Address: (replace '+' with '@' before using) mandira.kala+umb.edu

Institution:University of Massachusetts Boston, USA

Academic Background: PhD Candidate in Public Policy

Current Areas of Interest: Deliberative Democracy, Governance, Human Development Outcomes

Name: Thomas Hyeono Kang
Institution: University of Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Academic background:
B. A. in Economics at Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil.

Current studies:
Master programme in Economics (focusing Institutions and Development) at the University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil.

Interest:
Development Economics, Capability Approach, Economic History, Philosophy of Economics, History of Economic Thought, Religion and Development.

Name: Martha King
Email Address: (replace '+' with '@' before using) mberry8+slu.edu

Academic background: Purdue University, B.A. (Political Science and German); Universitaet Hannover; currently a doctoral student in Philosophy at Saint Louis University.

Current area of interest: Political theory, the history of economics, and the philosophical bases for (and implications of) economic and political systems and theories.

Name: Robert Kipp

Institution: Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, Japan

Academic background: Bachelor of Business Administation (Economics); currently in the second semester of a Master of International Cooperation Policy degree.

Current area of interest: Community capacity development

Secific research topic: NGOs and community capacity development in Khao Lak, Thailand. The Khao Lak area suffered much damage and loss of life in the 2004 tsunami and is still in the rebuilding process with many NGOs making the transition from relief to long-term development.The issues of "agency" and human development are very interesting in this case due to the large number of NGOs looking for programmes to conduct, and struggling to find local community members to work with.

Name: Clemens Mader
E-mail: (replace '+' with '@' before using) Clemens.mader+uni-graz.at

Institution: Regional Center of Expertise – Education for Sustainable Development
Institute of Geography and Regional Science
University of Graz, Austria

Academic background: MSc. In Environmental System Science; Regional Geography PhD Student

Current area of interest: Change Management, NLP, Transdiciplinary Change Processes; Sustainability, Education for Sustainable Development, Regional Development

Specific research topic: PhD: Change Management in Regions Change Management Methods for Sustainable Regional Development Education for Sustainable Development Transdiciplinary Case Studies

Name: Ely José de Mattos
E-mail: (replace '+' with '@' before using) ely.mattos+ufrgs.br

Institution: The University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.

Academic background:
Economist, Master's Degree in Rural Development (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul , Porto Alegre, Brazil, Degree obtained in 2006). Currently I am a Research Student at The University of Tokyo, Japan.

Area of interest and specific research topic:
I have been working on development issues since I was an undergraduate student. During my Master I have worked on the operationlization of the Capability Approach based on secondary database, applied to Brazilian rural areas.
My research topic, nowadays, is the study of the links between human well-being and environment. Furthermore, I am still very interested in the Capability Approach as basis for this sort of study.

Key-words of academic interest:
poverty analysis, development economics and environment, poverty-environment links, Capability Approach, quantitative methods applied to development studies.

Name: Daniel G. Ogbaharya

Institution: Department of Political Science, Northern Arizona University, USA

Academic background: Political Science and international Development Studies

Current area of interest and specific research topic if any: The politics of community-based resources management in Africa; decentralization in post-conflict settings; discursive democracy; comparative institutional analysis.

Name: René Ramírez

Institution: Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales- Ecuador (FLACSO), Quito-Ecuador

Academic background: MA. Development Economics (ISS); M.A. Governance and Public Policy (FLACSO-México)

Current area of interest: Adaptive Preference, Happiness, Inequality and Subjective and Objective Well-Being.

Name: Sahondra Razakatiana

Insitution: Centre d'Economie et d'Ethique pour l'Environnement et le Développement (C3ED), Versailles, France

Academic background: Agonomist -Economist

Specific research: Indicators of poverty and inequality to evaluate the social sustainability of development

Name: Bharat Chandra Rout

Institution: National University of Educational Planning and Administration, (NUEPA), New Delhi.

Area of Research: Education and Human Development

Current and Specific Area of Research: Curriculum Design and Pedagogic Transaction for Human Capabilties

Education: A Study on introducing Sen's Capabiltiy Approach in Education.

Name: Paola Salardi
E-mail: (replace '+' with '@' before using) paola.salardi+unibocconi.it

Institution: University of Pavia, Italy

Academic background:
My academic background focuses on poverty and inequality measurement, both theoretical and empirical issues and on Latin American areas, particularly Brazil. In 2003 I graduated in Economics majoring in International Economics at Bocconi University in Italy with a thesis on Poverty Reduction Strategies for Latin American countries. In 2005 I have gained a MA Degree with distinction in Development Economics at the University of Sussex working on Poverty and Inequality decomposition methodologies using Brazilian data under the supervision of Julie Litchfield.

Current area of interest and specific research topic:
I am a fourth year Ph.D. student in Quantitative Methods for Policy Analysis at Catholic University in Italy. The thesis embraces studies on Poverty and Inequality analysis for Brazil by applying decomposition techniques and ultimately an attempt of study Brazilian well-being in the context of the Capability Approach supervised by Enrica Chiappero-Martinetti. In operationalizing the Capability Approach, I am trying to estimate individual Conversion Factors using Brazilian micro-data on health conditions.
I am also involved in a research project with Barry Reilly on Wage discrimination and Occupational segregation by racial groups in Brazil at the University of Sussex.

Name: Iris van Domselaar

Academic Background:
Phd-student, University of Amsterdam

Specific Research Topic:
Justice and principles of good administration

Current Area of Interest:
Aristotle's ethics and politics, Nussbaum's Capabilities Approach, Public deliberation about ends, (In)commensurability of Values, Tragic choice, Well-Being, Administrative- Constitutional law.