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The Institute for the Study of International Development is pleased to announce the arrival on August 1st of Professor Yann le Polain de Waroux, jointly hired with the Department of Geography.  Professor le Polain de Waroux has a doctorate from the Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium) and most recently held a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University.  His research examines the role of people’s livelihood and land use choices as a nexus between social and environmental, and global and local dynamics in rural areas of the Global South. In particular, he is interested in the relationship between globalization, human and capital mobility and land-use change, and its implications for development and environmental sustainability; and in the role of learning and adaptation processes in strengthening the resilience of rural communities in the face of environmental change. He uses an empirical approach integrating qualitative and quantitative methods to explore these questions. His main areas of interest have been North Africa — specifically woodlands of Southern Morocco — and the Gran Chaco ecoregion of Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay. His current work investigates the transformation of land use around agricultural commodity frontiers, and the role of structural and agent-level factors in their expansion.

Please join us in welcoming Professor le Polain de Waroux to McGill and to the Institute.