Projects
Politics and governance of circular plastics economy in the European Union Ghent University
The European Union has made the development of a circular economy one of the central ambitions
of its Green Deal, in which plastics are a defined priority. The current policies, however, have drawn
criticism that the narrow focus on techno-innovation opportunities and economic growth falls short to
address multifaceted socio-ecological challenges and conceals conflicts of interest among different
...The political ecology of water access in urbanizing towns in Nepalese Himalaya KU Leuven
Himalayas with their snowfields, glaciers and perennial rivers are considered to be the largest reservoir of freshwater on the planet. However, access to drinking water has now become an everyday challenge to the people living in the Himalaya region because of the rapid urbanization and growing socioeconomic and environmental changes. Urban water scarcity is acute particularly in Nepal, as towns are growing rapidly while water supply systems ...
The Political Ecology of Human-Wildlife Conflict Management in Western Uganda Ghent University
This thesis examines how conservation conflicts were created and became entrenched in two national parks in Uganda. It assesses colonial conservation policies of dispossession by primitive accumulation and the continuity of these policies by the post-colonial state and international conservation NGOs. In the thesis I show that conservation conflicts are the result of resistance by local communities against the hegemony of colonial ...
The political ecology of urban water access in the Himalaya KU Leuven
Himalayas with their snowfields, glaciers and perennial rivers are the largest reservoir of freshwater on the planet. However, emerging towns in the Himalayas are threatened by water stress, triggered by climate change and rapid urbanization. This study will examine the changing landscape of urban water governance triggered by the donor funded large-scale urban water supply projects in the Nepal Himalaya, focusing on how power and authority ...
Sabbatical Marc Swyngedouw: The redesigned political ideological space: socio economic and urban transformation processes, glocalization, transforming welfare state provisions and (re)new(ed) cleavages. KU Leuven
In twenty years' time, the political power space in Flanders has been completely distorted. The three traditional parties (CD&V, Open-VLD and sp.a) still accounted for 38.6% in the Flemish elections of 2019.
In 1999 they still accounted for 60%. The proportion of voters that the three traditional parties were able to win in the 1991 parliamentary elections in Flanders – the start of the ISPO election survey – was 66%. The ...
The transformation of the socio-economic left-right cleavage? Voting behand changing attitudes towards economy and social policies (1990-2015). KU Leuven
Social economy and cooperatives in the West and China. KU Leuven
The Illegal Economy of Democracy in a Militarised Society – the Case of Bodoland, Assam Ghent University
The PhD project uses a twofold theoretical framework of political economy of extraction and
postcolonial democracy to understand the functioning of illegal economy of timber and its association with democratic processes like election funding, client-patronage relationships. Using a political ethnography methodology across several villages in BTAD, Assam, the project seeks to integrate the discourses around illegal economy, ...
Trade networks in the Roman economy. Family relationships, trust and cooperation in a growing state structure. Ghent University
This project aims at a structural analysis of trade networks in the Roman economy, more specifically in Republican Delos on the one hand and Ostia and Puteoli during the Imperial period on the other hand. A comparison of both analyses will show to what extent the introduction of a uniform governmental structure influences the nature of the networks. The working hypothesis is that political integration makes wider and more efficient networks ...