As a researcher, I try to analyze why and how humans and social processes can obstruct collaborative problem solving, and what we need to do to solve the issues we as an interconnected global community face today. For me, some of the most important issues include global poverty, climate change & sustainability, conflicts & security, and the lack of diversity in powerful institutions. 

I am particularly interested in how development aid can be used as a tool to address these issues. Due to the inherent complexity of development assistance, stakeholders in the development community face a multitude of challenges in their attempts to achieve development goals. We emphasize the importance of understanding and appreciating the various challenges that play out in the front-lines of development projects, while aiming to conduct research that provides systematic or practical lessons for these stakeholders. One of the ways we try to achieve this is by analyzing organizational or institutional systems, and to generate lessons that can enhance the capacity or management skills of stakeholders. As a research team, our goal is to contribute to theories and/or frameworks that can help liberate people from poverty, or will help organizations striving to achieve universal or locally co-constructed development goals.

My efforts to conduct qualitative and mixed-method research on how these themes apply to the context of international development have led me to produce studies in conflict resolution, evaluation theory and methodology, system dynamics, linguistics (socio-linguistics and cognitive linguistics), communication studies, and discourse analysis (among others).

Please take a look at our APPLICATION PROCEDURES if you are interested in applying. 

I am also affiliated with the Department of Civil Engineering where I supervise undergraduate students.