Group: Faculty

Research Focus

A substantial portion of my research focuses on financial market responsibility and disclosure requirements that can be adopted to increase the fairness of financial markets for average investors. More recently, I have begun look at the CSR focus of firms, and the types of CSR activities that are material and immaterial for different industries.

Select Publications

■ Christophe, S. E., & Lee, H. (2020). Material and immaterial corporate social responsibility and financial performance: Evidence from IPOs. Academy of Management Discoveries.

■ Angel, J. J., Christophe, S. E., & Ferri, M. G. (2019). A close look at short selling on Nasdaq. Financial Analysts Journal, 59(6), 66–74.

■ Christophe, S. E., Ferri, M. G., & Hsieh, J. (2010). Informed trading before analyst downgrades: Evidence from short sellers. Journal of Financial Economics, 95(1), 85–106.

■ Christophe, S. E., Ferri, M. G., & Angel, J. J. (2007). Should owners of Nasdaq stocks fear short-selling? The Journal of Portfolio Management, 33(3), 122–131.

Research Focus

My recent work particularly examines the environmental, indigenous, and spatial politics of contestation over biological resources in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. The resources are removed and marketed around the world as medicines by multinational companies. My book manuscript on this subject highlights the complex relationship between the global governance of biodiversity conservation and commercialization, explosions in indigenous rights consciousness, and the role of foreign firms in local politics. In another recently completed study, I used interviews with medical doctors and researchers to examine a unique clinical trial in South Africa that assessed the safety and efficacy of an African traditional medicine in HIV-seropositive persons.

Select Publications

■ Morris, C. (2016). Royal pharmaceuticals: Bioprospecting, rights, and traditional authority in South Africa. American Ethnologist, 43(3), 525–539.

■ Morris, C. (2019). A ‘Homeland’s’ harvest: Biotraffic and biotrade in the contemporary Ciskei region of South Africa. Journal of Southern African Studies, 45(3), 597–616.

■ Morris, C. (2017). Biopolitics and boundary work in South Africa’s sutherlandia clinical trial. Medical Anthropology, 36(7), 685–698.

■ Morris, C. (2013). Pharmaceutical Bioprospecting and the law: The case of umckaloabo in a former apartheid homeland of South Africa. Anthropology News, 53(10), 1-15.

Research Focus

Current Projects

■ A new book of poems with a working title of Field Notes, in which each poem or section of one long poem explores a particular delimited space, whether agricultural hedgerow or the ecotone of open meadow and woods, a stream officially designated as wild, a partly reclaimed dump, or a wide tranche of flowing river. The sequence I envision now might even run the whole 426 miles of the Connecticut River, from its headwaters at Fourth Connecticut Lake on the Canadian border to its mouth at Long Island Sound. The Great Tidal River runs through New England‚ cities and forests as well as its cultural and historical landscape. It also runs through both my parents family histories and my own childhood. All that may or may not come into the new project. Poetry has a way of veering in its own direction, and I believe strongly in following its lead.

■ “The Narrow Road Through Fukushima” is a project I hope to begin during my next leave, which is still some time off. It would mean following the path of the great Japanese haibun poet Basho, walking and driving the same path he walked in 1689. That path would take me near if not through lands that were flooded during the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant disaster in March 2011.

Select Publications

■ Atkinson, J. (2016). The Thinking Eye. Free Verse Editions/Parlor Press.

■ Atkinson, J. (2012). Canticle of the Night Path. Free Verse Editions/Parlor Press.

■ Atkinson, J. (2008). Drift Ice. Etruscan Press.

■ Atkinson, J. (2000). The Drowned City. Northeastern University Press.

■ Atkinson, J. (1990). The Dogwood Tree. University of Alabama Press.

Research Focus

Current Projects

■ Natural resource peacebuilding governance in Indonesia.

■ “Palm Oil Politics” – a collaborative project with Dr. Agnieszka Paczynska of GMU’s Carter School to investigate conflicts around palm oil in West Africa and Southeast Asia.

■ Gender and Conflict – conduct research on gender and peacebuilding, violence against women, and gender and access to justice in Indonesia, Nepal, and the Philippines, working with USAID and other organizations on analysis of the gender dynamics of conflict.

Select Publications

■  Dwyer, L. (2020). Indonesia Strategic Assessment. USAID/ Indonesia.

■ Dwyer, L. & Paczynska, A. (2019). Palm oil and peacebuilding: state power and community resistance. Paper presented to Building Sustainable Peace: Ideas, Evidence, Strategies, Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame.

■ Dwyer, L. (2018). A Framework for the Assessment of Land and Resource Conflicts. Jakarta: World Resources Institute.

Research Focus

My work examines how institutional relationships and catastrophic events drive energy and environmental policymaking and change. Specific areas of focus include sustainability and resilience challenges in the energy-water nexus, solutions that leverage energy-water interdependencies, and energy system transitions in Japan, India, and China. My research in these areas helps to integrate energy and water policies and practices at international, national and local levels, bridging relevant United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with national policies and local initiatives. My research concurrently contributes to existing work on community resilience by identifying institutional, socio-economic, and ecological challenges to local energy and water systems, as well as integrative solutions to these challenges. Finally, my work highlights the qualitative institutional factors that influence energy and water policy implementation and transitions, providing insights necessary for understanding the potential for success of technical solutions to energy and water system challenges.

Current Projects

■ Empowering Community Resilience: Identifying Parameters for Leveraging Storm Water Management for Green Electricity: This project aims to identify technological, ecological, geographical, socio-economic and institutional challenges to deployment of hydropower micro- turbines with battery storage, as well as potential solutions. The project also will analyze the potential for small-scale clean power applications such as cell phone charging stations, emergency lighting, and mini-fridges. Results will yield valuable lessons for local and overseas communities facing energy and water system resilience challenges.

■ Food-Energy-Water Nexus Solutions (FEWS) Project: In collaboration with faculty in food/nutrition and engineering, this project involves research on food, energy, water and climate challenges facing low income, rural communities. Through needs assessments, the project enables collaboration with communities to determine their food, energy and water needs and develop potential solutions.

Select Publications

■ Sklarew, J. (Forthcoming). The influence of institutional relationships on policy change during focusing events. In Managing Challenges for the Flint Water Crisis. Tonya Neaves, Drew Williams, Katie Simon, and Jennifer Sklarew, eds. Westphalia Press.

■ Sklarew, J. (2018). Power fluctuations: How Japan’s nuclear infrastructure priorities influence electric utilities’ clout. Energy Research & Social Science, 41, 158-167.

■ Sklarew, J. & Sklarew, D. (2017). Empowering resilience in energy and water systems: Addressing barriers to implementation of urban hydroelectric micro-turbines. In The CIP Report. Center for Infrastructure Protection & Homeland Security.

Research Focus

I am interested in the ability of the arts to create, sustain, and enhance communities on several levels. Artistic practice often involves asking difficult questions in a public space, allowing for communal reflection, sharing of experiences and emotions, and developing new understandings. The arts can tell stories that access core truths — historical, personal, imagined — freed from the distracting clutter (or noise) of daily life. An example is “The Hundredth Meridian Project,” our collectively developed multi-modal theater piece on the historical roots of the Western water crisis and its contemporary implications. This work-in-progress traces the discovery of the truth about land use in the Arid Region, the policy debates that ensued, and the subsequent lessons both learned and unlearned as they play out cyclically in modern times, creating an extended parable about how good science can lead to bad outcomes when ignored or distorted by forces that transcend the rational. The arts and history have a powerful interplay in this project and in many others that I have worked on, and I am always interested in exploring this nexus more deeply.

Current Projects

■ Librettist, “Stations for Mychal,” a song cycle for tenor, viola, and piano, commissioned for the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks by Texas State University. Kevin D. Salfen, composer.

Select Publications

■ In Review: Davis, R. (2018). Translating for singing: The theory, art and craft of translating lyrics. The Mercurian.

■ Davis, R. (2014). Plays by women, one theater’s story. Howlround Theatre Commons.

Research Focus

Current Projects

■ A project analyzing the cultural underpinnings of German economic competitiveness.

■ Development 2.0: How Technologies Can Promote Inclusivity in the Developing World. Manuscript Under Contract & Preparation. New York: Oxford University Press.

Select Publications

■ Singh, J.P. 2020. Race, culture, and economics: An example from North-South trade relations. Review of International Political Economy.

■ Singh, J.P. (2020). Cultural values in political economy. Editor. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

■ Singh, J.P., et al. (2019). Science, technology, arts, and international relations. London: Routledge.

■ Singh, J.P. (2017). Sweet talk: paternalism and collective action in North-South trade negotiations. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

■ Singh, J.P. (2019). Development finance 2.0: Do participation and information technologies matter? Review of International Political Economy, 26(5), 886-910.

Research Focus

I have worked with the Maijuna indigenous group of the Peruvian Amazon on a wide variety of community-based biological and cultural conservation projects since 1999. In 2004, I helped the Maijuna establish FECONAMAI, a Maijuna indigenous federation, ultimately helping to empower and give voice to communities that had been marginalized for generations. Amongst other initiatives, I spearheaded a multi-year project with the Maijuna to map their remote ancestral territory and worked closely with them to successfully push the Peruvian Government to establish the 391,000-hectare Maijuna-Kichwa Regional Conservation Area (MKRCA). This is almost 1,000,000 acres of Maijuna primary rainforest and is 22% larger than Yosemite National Park. I am an affiliate faculty member of Environmental Science and Policy, the Department of Biology, and the Latin American Studies Program at George Mason University. I founded the non- governmental organization OnePlanet to continue to follow my passion of partnering with indigenous and traditional communities to build a more sustainable, empowered, and just future.

Current Projects

■ Community-based Mammal Conservation in Maijuna Indigenous Lands, Peruvian Amazon.

■ Using Stingless Beekeeping (Meliponiculture) as a Sustainable Development Tool to Support Maijuna Indigenous Communities in the Peruvian Amazon.

■ Ecologically and Culturally Responsible Ecotourism in Maijuna lands, Peruvian Amazon.

■ Stories from the Forest: A Place-Based Biography of an Amazonian Indigenous Leader.

Select Publications

■ Virapongse, A., et al. (2017). Ecology, livelihoods, and management of the Mauritia flexuosa palm in South America. Global Ecology and Conservation, 10, 70-92.

■ Bowler, M. T., et al. (2017). Estimating mammalian species richness and occupancy in tropical forest canopies with arboreal camera traps. Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation, 3(3), 146-157.

■ Gilmore, M. P., and Young, J. C. (2012). The use of participatory mapping in ethnobiological research, biocultural conservation, and community empowerment: a case study from the Peruvian Amazon. Journal of Ethnobiology, 32(1), 6-30.