91社区

ISID Faculty (2024-2025)

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Francesco Amodio

Associate Professor, Institute for the Study of International Development and Department of Economics

Francesco Amodio earned his Ph.D. in Economics from Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona in 2015. He is an applied microeconomist with a strong interest in labor economics and its intersection with development and political economy. His research agenda revolves around market imperfections and their impact on the productivity and efficiency of organizations, focusing primarily on firms and labor markets in low-income countries.

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Diana Allan

Associate Professor, Institute for the Study of International Development and Department of Anthropology

Canada Research Chair in the Anthropology of Living Archives

Ph.D. Harvard University (2008)

Diana Allan is a scholar, archivist, and documentary filmmaker whose research explores the history and lived experience of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. She is the co-founder of the Nakba Archive, a grassroots testimonial initiative that has filmed refugee accounts of the 1948 destruction and displacement. Her 2014 ethnography examined local material realities animating social and political life in Shatila camp. Her recent edited volume presents the significance of refugee narratives for understanding the Nakba, its aftermath, and the history of colonialism and imperial state formation in the Middle East.

Allan鈥檚 ethnographic films Shatila, Beirut (2001), (2007), (2009), and (2018) build on these thematic concerns in their attention to camp ecologies, the mnemonic processes and material environments of exile, and the aesthetic and non-discursive registers of refugee experience. Her current film project, deconstructs cultural memory, archival authority and colonial history, bringing together interwar footage from British and Israeli colonial archives with contemporary audio recorded in Palestinian camps in Lebanon.

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Manuel Balan

Associate Professor, Institute for the Study of International Development and Department of Political Science

Manuel Bal谩n is Associate Professor in Political Science and International Development Studies (ISID) at 91社区. He is the recipient of multiple teaching awards, including the 2019 91社区 Principal鈥檚 Prize for Excellence in Teaching. His research focuses on corruption, transparency and anticorruption policies, political competition, media and politics, scandals, and the rule of law. He is the author of Today鈥檚 Allies, Tomorrow鈥檚 Enemies? The Political Dynamics of Corruption Scandals in Latin America (Notre Dame University Press, Forthcoming), and co-editor of Legacies of the Left Turn in Latin America. The Promise of Inclusive Citizenship (Notre Dame University Press, 2020). His research has also appeared in journals such as Comparative Politics, the Journal of Politics in Latin America, the Latin American Research Review, Desarrollo Econ贸mico, Revista de la Sociedad Argentina de Ana虂lisis Poli虂tico. He is currently the Acting Director of the Institute for the Study of International Development. He is also co-founder, member of the Executive Board, and former Director of RELAM (R茅seau d鈥櫭﹖udes latino-am茅ricaines de Montr茅al) and member of ERIGAL (脡quipe de recherche interuniversitaire sur l鈥檌nclusion et la gouvernance en Am茅rique latine). Before coming to 91社区, he received his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin, and a Law Degree in Argentina, where he is originally from.

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Jacob Blanc

Associate Professor, Institute for the Study of International Development and Department of History

Born and raised in San Francisco, Jacob received his BA from the University of California-San Diego. After a year working in southern Chile鈥攚ith a brief, career-altering trip to Brazil鈥攈e undertook a PhD in Latin American history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. After completing his PhD in 2017, he worked at the University of Edinburgh, receiving tenure in 2022, before accepting the new job at 91社区 starting in 2023.听 Jacob Blanc's research explores the overlap of human rights and social movements across 20th century Latin America, with a particular focus on Brazil.

His first book, Before the Flood: the Itaipu Dam the the Visibility of Rural Brazil () traces the protest movements of farmers, peasants, and indigenous groups in Brazil who were displaced by the Itaipu hydroelectric dam in the 1970s and 1980s. At the nexus of global energy regimes, Cold War militarism, and grassroots social movements, the book鈥檚 central concept of visibility tethers the actions of displaced groups to the more endemic issues of repression, resistance, and representation in Latin America.

His second book (forthcoming with ) uses the Prestes Column rebellion in the 1920s to chart a spatial history of development and nationalism in Brazil. Whereas the legend of the column鈥攁nd all existing scholarship鈥攈as focused on the heroic details of the 15,000-mile rebel march across the country, he reinterprets its legacy through the symbolism of Brazil鈥檚 interior. The book is titled The Prestes Column: an Interior History of Modern Brazil.

A third book (also forthcoming, with the University of North Carolina Press) is a biography of a former political prisoner and exile. Searching for Memory: Alu铆zio Palmar and the Shadow of Dictatorship offers more than just a straightforward biography. By placing his nearly forty hours of interviews with Palmar in dialogue with the public speaking, writing, and advocacy that he has conducted since the late 1990s, he explores the methodological implications of using oral histories to study the legacies of authoritarian rule.

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Megan Bradley

Director, ISID and Professor, Institute for the Study of International Development and Department of Political Science

Megan Bradley is Professor of political science and international development studies at 91社区. Her research and teaching focus on refugees, human rights, humanitarianism, transitional justice, natural disasters, and gender. She is the author of Refugee Repatriation: Justice, Responsibility and Redress (Cambridge University Press, 2013) and The International Organization for Migration: Commitments, Challenges, Complexities (Routledge, 2020), editor of Forced Migration, Reconciliation and Justice (91社区-Queen鈥檚 University Press, 2015), and co-editor (with James Milner and Blair Peruniak) of Refugees' Roles in Resolving Displacement and Building Peace: Beyond Beneficiaries (Georgetown University Press, 2019). Her research has also appeared in journals such as the Review of International Studies, Ethics and International Affairs, the International Journal of Transitional Justice, the Journal of Refugee Studies and the International Journal of Refugee Law. She serves as Associate Director of ISID, and Associate Director of the Centre for International Peace and Security Studies. She also coordinates the 91社区 Refugee Research Group.

Alongside her research and teaching, Professor Bradley has worked with a range of organizations concerned with humanitarianism, human rights and development. From 2012-2014, she was a Fellow in the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, where she was part of the Brookings Project on Internal Displacement. She has also worked with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), and served as the Cadieux-L茅ger Fellow in the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

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Yann le Polain de Waroux

Associate Professor, Institute for the Study of International Development and Department of Geography, Faculty of Science

Yann le Polain de Waroux has a doctorate from the Universit茅 Catholique de Louvain (Belgium) and held a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University before coming to 91社区. His research examines how people make choices about land use and livelihoods, and what these choices mean for environmental sustainability and human development, particularly in rural areas of the Global South. Prof. le Polain uses an empirical approach integrating qualitative and quantitative methods to explore these questions. His main area of interest has been the Gran Chaco ecoregion of Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay.

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Kazue Takamura

听Senior Faculty Lecturer, Institute for the Study of International Development

Kazue Takamura is Senior Faculty Lecturer at the Institute for the Study of International Development, 91社区. Her research focuses on Asian migration, gendered labor vulnerability, immigration detention, international migrant rights, and the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia.

Trained as an ethnographer, Takamura has studied the lived experiences of low-skilled migrant women and of detained refugees and migrants. Her research in Japan has led to extensive collaboration with civil society organizations defending the rights of refugees and migrants. As an FRQSC Post-Doctoral Fellow, Takamura conducted research on Filipina live-in caregivers鈥� experience of family separation in Canada. For her dissertation, she spent two years in a town on the Thai-Malaysian border, documenting the everyday lives of Chinese-Malaysian traders.

Takamura has published in edited books, journals, and online magazines, and has also authored reports for civil society organizations. She has received grants and fellowships from the Toyota Foundation, FRQSC, and SSHRC. She currently holds, as principal investigator, a SSHRC Insight Development Grant, entitled 鈥渢he Predicament of the Philippine Migrant Worker: An Analysis of Labor Sending Countries鈥� Responses to the Plight of Citizen Workers Abroad鈥� (2023-2025).

Takamura has received three teaching awards at 91社区: the Principal鈥檚 Prize for Excellence in Teaching in 2020; the Arts Undergraduate Society Teaching Excellence Award in 2018; and the IDS Most Outstanding Faculty Member Award from the International Development Studies Students Association in 2018. Fluent in Chinese, as well as a native speaker of Japanese, Takamura holds a Ph.D. from Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.