Research
Current projects
Changing Work at Sea
(PI: M. Marschke), 2024 – 2029
This project is a collaboration between researchers, labour advocates, seafarer missions, and fisheries unions seeking to improve working conditions at sea. Research goals include: (a) understanding and explaining why working conditions at sea continue to be unacceptable by any terrestrial standards; (b) meeting workers and change agents at ports of significance, with a focus on (but not limited to) the Atlantic Ocean; and (c) identifying key strategies and actions that improve working conditions for (migrant) workers in fishing.
This project is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Just Seafood
(PI: A. Kadfak), 2024 – 2027
This project focuses on seafood justice. The objectives are two-fold: (a) to understand how trash fish (forage or low value fish) supply chains impact ocean ecologies and worker precarity throughout Southeast Asia; and (b) to consider the potential of the European Union mHREDD directive—Mandatory Human Rights and Environmental Due Diligence—for addressing labour rights, using Vietnam’s seafood supply chains as a case study. Our core question is: who pays the price for the cheap seafood that enters into the European Union market?
This project is funded by Formas and the Swedish Research Council (VR)
Work at Sea
(PI: P. Vandergeest), 2020 – 2025
This Insight Grant focuses on ‘work at sea’, examining why unacceptable work remains the norm in industrial fishing. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we turned our attention towards understanding how the pandemic further heightened migrant fish worker precarity, and how policy reforms could enhance worker protections. We have since continued fieldwork in Southeast and East Asia, along with port-based fieldwork in South Africa and exclusive economic zone (EEZ) work in Ireland.
This project is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Dried Fish Matters
(PI: D. Johnson), 2018 – 2025
This transdisciplinary effort is identifying the overall contribution of dried fish to the food and nutrition security and livelihoods of the poor, and examining how production, exchange, and consumption of dried fish may be improved to enhance the wellbeing of marginalized groups and actors in the dried fish economy. The focus of uOttawa grad students and myself is female dried fish processors in the Tonle Sap region of Cambodia.
This project is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Past projects
Ecologies of Labour: Unpacking Labour, Ecology, and Mobility within the Seafood Sector (PI: M. Marschke), 2018 – 2023
This Insight Development Grant focused on the social and ecological conditions that produce unacceptable working conditions across the seafood sector. Particular attention was paid to ports across Taiwan and Thailand.
The project was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Integration of Social Wellbeing and Ecosystem Service Bundles for Adaptive Governance of Coastal Systems Experiencing Rapid Change (PI: D. Armitage), 2016 – 2023
Our aim was to help coastal communities develop governance strategies to support more resilient coastal systems. We did so by understanding the interactions among people’s wellbeing—material, subjective, and relational—and the ecosystem services upon which they depend. We refer to these interactions as "WEBs", or wellbeing-ecosystem service bundles, and we were particularly interested in how they emerge in coastal systems experiencing abrupt, unexpected, and irreversible change, or social-ecological regime shifts (SERS).
This project is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Sand Labour, Livelihoods, and Ecologies (PI: M. Marschke), 2019 – 2020
This project consolidated a network of ‘sand scholars’ to produce a co-authored article that makes sand mining and its associated issues visible through an analysis of its effects on labour, livelihoods, and ecologies.
This project was funded by the University of Ottawa through a Research Impact Competition award.
Transboundary Environmental Commons in Southeast Asia (PI: D. Taylor), 2018 – 2022
This collaboration aimed to identify, across a range of spatial scales, the drivers and impacts of governing the atmospheric and freshwater commons that are producing cascading transboundary environmental disruptions and major challenges for sustainable development. The grant brought new attention to environmental problems that cannot be neatly contained within nation-states such as the impacts of climatic instability, seasonal atmospheric pollution (regionally known as ‘haze’), biomass fires, droughts, crossborder floods, and the depletion or destruction of riparian ecosystems.
This project was funded by the Social Sciences Council of Singapore.
New Directions in Environmental Governance: Remaking Public and Private Authority in the Southeast Asian Resource Frontier (PI: P. Vandergeest), 2014 – 2019
In this research project, we explored the effects of new environmental governance mechanisms in Southeast Asia through grounded research of diverse programs and projects. The research enabled us to assess the effects of new environmental governance approaches on both peoples and ecologies in the region. We were particularly interested in the effects for small scale fishers, farmers, forest users, and hired workers.
The project was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Urban Climate Resilience in Southeast Asia Partnership (PI: A. Daniere, P. Thinphanga), 2014 – 2019
The Urban Climate Resilience in Southeast Asia Partnership (UCRSEA) was a multi-disciplinary and international collaborative partnership, combining the science of interpreting climate change’s uncertainties, risks, and impacts with social science analysis from geography, anthropology, and planning. It addressed vulnerabilities to climate change in urbanizing areas of Southeast Asia to enhance resilience and, hence, economic and social well-being.
The Partnership was funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).
Fisheries Transitions in Southeast Asia (PI: M. Marschke), 2011 – 2016
This project focused on livelihood transitions, poverty, and environmental governance strategies for small producers (fishers and fish farmers) across the fisheries sector in Southeast Asia. Case study research assessed the potential of certification as a governance strategy for small producers (see Marschke and Wilkings 2014). Survey results from fieldwork in Vietnam (n=599) suggested that small-scale producers were struggling: stock decline was perceived to be an issue impacting the entire sector, with many fishers and fish farmers lying at, or below Vietnam’s poverty line (Marschke and Betcherman 2016; Betcherman and Marschke 2016). This project also drew on macro data (FishStatJ, United Nations Development Programme indicators) to understand how Southeast Asia has emerged as a global fish basket, and what this means for food security, poverty alleviation, and economic development (see Marsachke 2016).
This Standard Research Grant was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Common Pool Governance in Vietnam, 2008 – 2011
We (researchers from Hue University of Agriculture in Vietnam, along with several Canadian researchers) worked across two ecosystems (upland forest and lagoon) to analyze property rights and the potential for collective forms of natural resource governance. Research outputs included three books on property rights for a Vietnamese audience, a policy brief on fisheries co-management, and several multi-authored peer review papers including one for The International Journal of the Commons (see Marschke et al. 2012), another for Marine Policy (Armitage et al. 2011), and a final for Environmental Science & Policy (Armitage & Marschke 2013). At a practical level, management rights were designated to several lagoon villages for fishing and fish farming; project work additionally supported the creation of a co-management network encompassing over 50 fisheries associations found throughout the lagoon. In the upland field site, enhanced access rights were negotiated particularly for poorer households.
This project was funded by the International Development Research Centre.
The Challenges of the Agrarian Transition in Southeast Asia (ChATSEA), 2005 – 2010
This Major Research Collaborative Initiative (Principal Investigator, Rodolphe de Koninck, Geography, University of Montréal) focused on understanding agrarian change across Southeast Asia. ChATSEA produced a series of books, including one in which I contributed a chapter, Revisiting Rural Places: Pathways to Poverty and Prosperity in Southeast Asia (Rigg & Vandergeest 2012). Chapter contributors each conducted village restudies, whereby scholars returned to the sites of their original dissertation research (masters or doctoral) to follow what had happened to households and the village more generally since the original research had taken place. Particular attention was paid to surprises and unexpected events that had taken place over the ensuing years.
This project was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.