Research Projects

Principal Investigator: Milind Kandlikar, IAR and Liu Institute

 

Indian cities are among the most polluted in the world. This project examines the impact of traffic related air pollution on air quality in Indian cities. The research consists of several discrete but interconnected topics including: detection of trends in air quality data and attribution to traffic and other sources; measurements and modeling of in-use emissions from vehicles; impact of switch to CNG and LPG in India's auto-rickshaw fleet on air emissions; and the relationship between air quality policy and global climate change. Dr. Kandlikar collaborates on aspects of this project with Dr. Madhav Badami (McGill) and Dr. Geetam Tiwari (Indian Institute of Technolgy, Delhi). This work is funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Auto-21 Network Three doctoral students - Conor Reynolds (UBC); Arvind Saraswat (UBC) and Christian Krelling (McGill) - also work on this project.

 

 

 

Principal Investigator: Dr. Pitman B. Potter, IAR HSBC Chair in Asian Research and Faculty of Law

  

Funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council - Major Collaborative Research Initiative (MCRI) Program, this Phase Two MCRI project over the next seven years involves an important expansion of Phase One work (SSHRC-MCRI funded grant on Asia Pacific Disputes Resolution: Cross-cultural and Comparative Disputes Resolution Research). It applies the paradigms of Selective Adaptation and Institutional Capacity to the critically important issue of coordinated compliance with international trade and human rights standards. Based on new data derived from archival, interview, and Case Study sources in Canada, China, Japan, India and Indonesia, the project will test a range of hypotheses in order to develop an explanatory and predictive model that supports forecasting of coordinated trade and human rights compliance at local levels in Canada and Asia. Discoveries and insights gained through the research will be disseminated to a wide range of Canadian and international academic, policy, and civil society stakeholders. Research results will further the process of scholarly discovery, support informed policy making, and strengthen Canadian leadership in coordinated trade and human rights compliance, so as to reduce and prevent disputes and facilitate more effective international cooperation.

 

 

 

Principal Investigator: Julian Dierkes, Keidanren Chair in Japanese Research

 

Funded by a standard research grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada (SSHRC), Dr. Julian Dierkes is researching Japanese juku, the for-profit afternoon and weekend schools that many Japanese schoolchildren attend. He is conducting ethnographic fieldwork at approximately 30 schools in the greater Tokyo area, in Kansai, in Hiroshima and in rural Shimane Prefecture.

 

Dr. Dierkes is particularly interested in how operators of small juku relate to the education market that they are a part of. Early results show that there is no curricular diversity in this market, but a lot of organizational diversity. As one would expect of small-and-medium-sized enterprises, small juku attempt to shield themselves from the impact of the market in some areas (geographically, hiring practices, etc.) while not being able to avoid this impact in other areas of their operations (creeping oligopolization, technology lag, etc.).

 

 

 

Principal Investigator: Richard Paisley, IAR Research Associate

 

The objective of this project, a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) project, funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), as well as a wide range of government, NGO and private sector partners is to foster more sustainable governance and effective decision making in integrated transboundary water and energy resources management.  The project identifies, collects, analyzes, adapts, replicates and shares beneficial practices and lessons learned from existing legal and other institutional frameworks for selected international freshwater, international groundwater and international marine environments. This will lead to strengthened multi-country cooperation and more sustainable governance models through more ecosystem-based and more adaptive management regimes as well as increased economic and environmental benefits to countries sharing water and energy resources along with assistance in meeting the challenges of global climate change.  Experiential learning, South-South peer collaboration and gender mainstreaming are key foci of all activities.  The principal investigator for the project are Dr. Pitman Potter and Richard Kyle Paisley.  Other UBC faculty, staff, contractors and students associated with the project include Susan Bazilli, Kate Neville, Glen Hearns, Natasha Affolder, Stephen Owen and Joseph Weiler.

 

Principal Investigator: Hyung Gu Lynn, AECL/KEPCO Chair in Korean Research

 

Studies of migration in contemporary contexts have proliferated over the past decade. However, the power of demographic ideas to engender very material forms of organized migration has received, at least in relative terms, little attention. Funded by SSHRC, this project analyses the diffusion and impact of Malthusian discourse of overpopulation became one of the primary engines of Japanese colonial expansion from 1895 to 1945. It examines these intersections of colonialism, modern demography, and surveys with visions of overpopulated dystopias and fecund, untrammelled colonial utopias through the use of archival and theoretical material, linking intellectual history to migration studies.

 

Some of the relevant publication results are below:

 

 

Principal Investigator: Hyung Gu Lynn, AECL/KEPCO Chair in Korean Research

 

Growing numbers of lives and perceptions within Northeast Asia are influenced in various ways by transnational flows of cultural commodities and cultural practices, such as Korean television soap operas, Japanese karaoke, Japanese animation, Taiwanese pop songs, Hong Kong film stars, or Chinese pirate DVDs. Such increases in the transnational circulation of popular culture have led to two seemingly contradictory yet deeply intertwined developments. On the one hand, there appears to be a growth in a common consumer or audience culture from “below,” while on the other, governments move to articulate and regulate these flows from “above.” As the reasons for audience and governmental reactions to each program or commodity in each country are inevitably varied, the project aims to analyze the circulation of popular culture within the Northeast Asia region through empirically grounded, interdisciplinary analysis that looks at both connections and comparisons. The Japan Foundation, Asia Research Fund, Centre for Korean Research and the Centre for Japanese Research sponsors this research project.  

 

The project involves (a) an international conference that was held in February 2008; (b) public lectures by three contributors from Japan in March 2008; and (c) the planned publication of a volume edited by Hyung Gu Lynn based on papers from the conference.

 

Some relevant publications are as follow:

 

 

Principal Investigator: Abidin Kusno, Canada Research Chair in Contemporary Social Change and Sustainable Development in Southeast Asia

 

A SSHRC-funded project, “Re-making Jakarta” is an attempt to understand the interconnections between neoliberalism, political changes, and the various scales of spatial production in the new Indonesia. This research project intends to contribute to the study of Indonesia in two ways: by bringing more specific attention to the role of the built environment in shaping social changes, and by examining the role that such physical space plays in the formation of new political identities and urban citizenship. Studying the role of architecture and urban space in the formation of social and political identities would allow us to tease out the regimes of power that operate in the city and to deconstruct the meaning of the post-Suharto era.

 

 

 

Principal Investigator: Milind Kandlikar, IAR and Liu Institute  

 

India has emerged as a major battleground in the global debate over genetically modified organisms, and the regulatory process in India is marked by extensive public scrutiny and scientific controversy. This project aims to understand the emergence and evolution of these controversies and to examine their links to the national regulatory process, and the role of science therein. Kandlikar is the Principal investigator of this project funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. This work is being done in collaboration with anthropologist Dr. Terre Satterfield at UBC. Julia Freeman (UBC) is the doctoral student working on this project.