Research
Current projects
Changing Work at Sea
(PI: M. Marschke), 2024 – 2029
More details to come!
Dried Fish Matters
(PI: D. Johnson), 2018 – 2025
This transdisciplinary effort will identify the overall contribution of dried fish to the food and nutrition security and livelihoods of the poor, and examine 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.
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 fish 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’?
Just Seafood is a collaboration between Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (Sweden), the University of Ottawa (Canada), the Institute of Social Sciences in the Central Region (Vietnam) & the Centre for Natural Resources and Environment (CDRI) (Cambodia)
Work at Sea
(PI: P. Vandergeest), 2020 – 2024
This Insight Grant focuses on ‘work at sea’, examining why unacceptable work remains the norm in industrial fishing. During the 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 EEZ work in Ireland.
Past projects
Ecologies of Labour: Unpacking Labour, Ecology and Mobility within the Seafood Sector (PI: M. Marschke), 2018 – 2023
This IDG 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.
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).
Sand Labour, Livelihoods and Ecologies (PI: M. Marschke), 2019 – 2020
This Research Impact Competition award (FSS, U Ottawa) 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.
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.
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.
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.
My SSHRC SRG (2011-2016) Fisheries Transitions in Southeast Asia 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) suggest that small-scale producers are struggling: stock decline is 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, UNDP 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).
Common Pool Governance in Vietnam, 2008-2011
Funded by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC), 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 (c.f., 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.
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 Montreal) 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 and 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.