PhD student, Geography
Faculty advisor: Matthew Turner
Emily is a PhD student in Geography. She earned a bachelor of arts degree in International Affairs and Geography from the University of Mary Washington, and a master of science in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from George Mason University. Prior to joining UW–Madison, Emily volunteered with the Peace Corps in Mali and served as a program officer at the U.S. Institute of Peace.
At UW–Madison, Emily has been a WARF-supported project assistant on the Research Forward project examining climate change and conflict in the Sahel region of West Africa. This project explores a more complex understanding of how climate change interacts with other sources of conflict related to resources, and how insurgency movements may or may not use such tensions to gain support. The project team focuses on empirical evidence from Mali.
Emily said the project will shed more light on the relationship between conflict and climate change, which will be increasingly important across the globe due to increased variability in the climate.
“Development programming and policy tends to assume a direct link between climate change and conflict, particularly in places like Mali where people largely depend on natural resource-based livelihoods, like farming. The general idea is that people are fighting over scarce resources, and that this happens in a fast, reactive way – for example, if it does not rain, people take up arms that same year,” Emily said. “Yet the research that has been done on this relationship is mixed at best, and there’s surprisingly little of it that uses empirical data, which means that programming and policy formulated based on the assumption of a direct relationship is likely to treat the wrong problems, and potentially make the situation worse, not better.”
As one of three geographers on a team that also includes agricultural economists and political scientists, Emily contributes expertise on the broader context in Mali and works closely with the Mali-based research team. She has helped develop survey instruments, trained researchers in Institutional Review Board protocols, and monitored the data the research team collects.
“I deeply appreciate the opportunity to be able to work on such an interesting and innovative project with an interdisciplinary team,” Emily said. “The experience has been quite valuable for me, in learning how academic research in conducted and in providing a foundation for my own doctoral research.”
Emily’s own research looks at how climate change and conflict affect social identities and livelihood practices among livestock herders in Mali. Increasing climate variability in the past decade has impacted milk production, which in turn impacts women’s economic opportunities, as they are customarily the primary milk marketers.
“Ongoing violent conflict in central and northern Mali has restricted not only herd movements, but also women’s mobility, and they are not always able to go sell their dairy products in the markets,” Emily said. “I am trying to learn how women are adapting to these rapidly changing conditions, as well as how pastoralist groups more generally are coping with climate change and restricted mobility.”
In addition to her work on the Research Forward project, Emily has received funding for her dissertation research from the West African Research Association. She also earned a Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship in 2021-2022. Through her WARF-supported project assistantship with Research Forward, Emily said she has been able to connect with researchers in Mali and work with more partners there whom she hopes she can collaborate with on her dissertation research.