The Geography Department will welcome Dr. Julie Silva, University of Maryland, College Park, on Wednesday, October 19, 2022, at 10:00 am in 170 Academic Center (formerly 170 Fillmore).

Research Projects Past, Present and Future

In the first section of the talk, Dr. Silva will introduce her work on economic globalization, trade, and development. She has worked on these issues for over 15 years, focusing largely on comparative case studies in Namibia and Mozambique. This work has examined both agricultural trade and tourism-based development strategies, and their impact on poverty and inequality. As the research program has developed, it has increasingly involved collaboration with Earth scientists examining processes of environmental change. These collaborative investigations include work on rural livelihoods, deforestation, and charcoal production, and work on the economic impacts of cyclones and rainfall variability.

In the second section, Dr. Silva will present some of her current work on coupled economic and environmental change in and near African protected areas. Drawing on longitudinal research conducted in Namibian and Mozambican communities, this work uses Amartya Sen’s capability approach to examine how wildlife regulations impact multidimensional well-being. Place theory functions as a lens through which to analyze and rank the less visible losses of conservation, and helps draw attention to how evolving person-place relationships affect human well-being.

In the third section, Dr. Silva will introduce some plans for future research. One project involves the further development of her collaborative work on the economic impact of cyclones and rainfall in Mozambique as Dr. Silva and her colleagues work to better understand the role and impact of flooding and soil degradation in this process. Another future area of research involves the project ‘Environmental Injustice and Deaths of Despair: Lessons from Montana’s Tribal Lands,’ which has recently been funded by NASA’s new Equity and Environmental Justice program.

Dr. Julie A. Silva is Professor of Geographical Sciences at the University of Maryland. Trained as an economic geographer, she has worked for several years on trade and economic development in Mozambique and Namibia, looking at both agricultural and tourism-based development strategies. In recent years her work has focused on the interaction of those economic issues with land-use change, extreme weather, and climate. This has increasingly involved collaboration with other earth scientists investigating processes of environmental change. These collaborative projects include work on rural livelihoods, deforestation, and charcoal production, and work on the economic impact of cyclones and rainfall variability. Dr. Silva’s work has been funded by both the NSF and NASA. Recently she has been funded by NASA’s new Equity and Environmental Justice program to investigate the interactions between environmental change and socio-economic conditions on Native American nations in Montana.

Everyone is welcome and encouraged to attend!!