BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES FOR CANDIDATES IN THE 2006 ELECTIONS
IASCP 2006 ONLINE VOTING IS NOW AVAILABLE !
2006 Nominee for President-Elect
Ruth Meinzen-Dick is a Senior Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), based in Washington DC. She is Coordinator of the CGIAR System-wide Program on Collective Action and Property Rights (CAPRi), a research program and network involving 15 international centers and partners at over 400 other organizations. She is a Development Sociologist who received her MSc and PhD degrees from Cornell University. Much of her work has been interdisciplinary research on water policy, local organizations, property rights, gender analysis, and the impact of agricultural research on poverty. She has conduced field work in Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, Kenya, and India, where she was born and raised. Her interest in the study of the commons developed when studying farmer management of irrigation in South India in the early 1980s, and has continued through over 25 years of research on water rights and water management. The CAPRi program has allowed her to look across different resource bases, including forestry, watersheds, rangelands, agricultural land, and fisheries, and she finds valuable insights from comparing across contexts and resources. These studies have led to publication of over 70 journal articles or book chapters, and 10 book or monographs that she has written or co-edited, including Innovation in Natural Resource Management: The Role of Property Rights and Collective Action in Developing Countries, and Negotiating Water Rights. Ruth has been a member of the IASCP since 1995, and served on the Executive Council since 2000. She feels honored to follow the many excellent Presidents of the IASCP, who have built this organization and raised the visibility of the commons worldwide. Ruth is strongly committed to IASCP as a unique organization for bringing together sound theory and research with policy and practice in the North and South. She feels that IASCP plays a valuable role in creating and sharing knowledge, through the Digest, the Digital Library of the Commons, and now through the launching of the International Journal of the Commons. She also feels that it is important to bring this knowledge to policy dialogues at many levels, from the local to the global, and hopes that her background as a policy researcher can help in this regard.
2006 Nominees for Executive Council
Frank Matose received his doctorate in philosophy in Development Studies from the University of Sussex (UK). Currently, he is a Senior Researcher/Program Manger in Community-based Natural Resource Management Program in the Program for Land and Agrarian Studies at the University of Western Cape in South Africa. Frank has also held positions as a Social Forestry Research Unit Leader at the Forestry Commission of Zimbabwe and as Project Team Leader, Adaptive Co-Management of Forests Program at the Center for International Forestry Research. Frank specializes in policy processes management in natural resource management; natural resource governance; authority and power relations; participatory forest management; community-based conservation and development; natural resources and livelihoods. His work is focused in the following geographical regions: Zimbabwe, South Africa, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, and Tanzania. Frank has published over 25 articles which include both referred journals and chapters in books. His IASCP-related experiences includes involvement in the publication of the book: “Managing Common Property in an Age of Globalization: Zimbabwean Experiences” by Weaver Press for the 2002 Conference. Also, since 2003, Frank has been managing a regional program of cross-sector/country research analysis and networking on CBNRM in Southern Africa. Through this program, Frank has been fostering scholarship, exchange visits, and e-mail based discussions on commons issues within the region across different disciplines and resource sectors. Frank’s vision for IASCP is to facilitate the growth of exchange of scholarship and experience around commons from an African perspective with the wider world.
Nirmal Sengupta received his M. Stat. and Ph. D. from Indian Statistical Institute. Currently, he is a Professor at Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, India. His major research areas include: Institutional Economics, Water Resources, International Trade, Indigenous/Traditional Knowledge, Law and Economics. Nirmal has conducted interdisciplinary work, with some amount of recognition from different fields. He has fieldworks (CPR related) experiences, in India, Philippines, Indonesia, South Africa. Nirmal has held positions as the Director, Madras Institute of Development Studies; UNDP, FAO, Netherlands Minister for Development Cooperation, World Commission on Dams, Ministries of Commerce and Industries, Environment, and Planning Commission (India). Nirmal started working on CPR issues in late 1980s and has been associated with the IASCP from its inception. He feels that IASCP is functioning well and his primary objective is to assist in its functions. The past few decades have seen increasing effort for promoting appropriate institutional design for CPRs. But how appropriate are these organizations? Some evaluations have been made using different criteria and methodologies. In its third decade of functioning, Nirmal envisions IASCP streamlining the assessment methods and systematizing exchanges in this area, in order to reach a better understanding of appropriate organizational forms.
John Sheehan received his Master’s degree in Environmental Law from the University of Sydney and has a Professional Certificate in Native Title and the Anthropology of Aboriginal Land Tenure from the University of Adelaide. Currently, he is a Sydney based consultant in Indigenous Property Rights and a doctoral candidate at the University of Sydney. John currently holds the following positions: Honorary Associate, Property Theory Research Sub-Cluster, Faculty of Design Architecture and Building, University of Technology, Sydney; Visiting Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Haifa, Mount Carmel Israel. John is also a Life Fellow, Australian Property Institute, and a Fellow, Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. He is a member of the Royal Town Planning Institute and the Planning Institute of Australia. Since 1977 he has been a researcher and practitioner in property theory and rights with a substantial body of publications, and also papers delivered to academic, government and community conferences in Australia and overseas. In 2003, John was appointed by the (then) Australian Deputy Prime Minister as Chair of the Steering Committee of the federally funded Water Property Titles Research Project. Since 2000, he has enthusiastically supported the regionalization initiative of IASCP acting as Pacific Regional Chair and convened the First and Second Pacific Regional Meetings in Brisbane in 2001 and 2003 respectively. John is currently organizing the Third Pacific Regional Meeting to be held in Auckland in September 2006. John’s vision for IASCP is for a strong regionally focused association with local initiatives strongly supported by the Council wherever possible. He believes that the funding difficulties that researchers and practitioners from developing nations encounter when attempting to attend IASCP Conferences and Meetings (especially for the small South Pacific nations) is an issue that must have the highest priority for IASCP Council if the Association is to truly represent the Study of the Commons in its many facets in the various global regions.
Doug Wilson received his PhD in sociology from Michigan State University. Currently, he is a Senior Researcher at The Institute for Fisheries Management, a small foundation in rural Denmark that studies community involvement in fisheries management. This work has led Doug to fisheries in Africa, Europe, North America and Southeast Asia. His intellectual journey began with a general interest in co-management, but he is focusing more on how groups who must cooperate to manage a fishery (or any commons) create the shared knowledge they need. Doug draws on the local knowledge and sociology of science literatures in his studies. His position at IFM involves coordinating pan-European fisheries projects that engage fishers, conservation groups, and scientists from many disciplines. He chairs a permanent working group at ICES, the international marine science organization, and in the last three years has co-edited two multidisciplinary books. These were also opportunities to learn about working with people who know things in different ways. Doug first joined IASCP in 1991 and has attended five global meetings. He serves on the Scientific Committee for the 2006 European IASCP meeting. Doug was Digest editor from 1999 through 2005. During this time period, he attended IASCP Executive Council meetings so is familiar with the responsibilities of a council member. Doug is excited to have the chance to continue to help build the IASCP. His vision for IASCP is to bring in more people who think differently about the commons. Doug feels that the key is to continue to strengthen the regions through regional events and facilitating broad participation in the global meetings.
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Last Updated March 25, 2008