Dr Emma Mawdsley BA PhD

University Senior Lecturer and Fellow of Newnham College

Human Geographer with a particular interest in the rising powers and the changing politics of development

Biography

Career:

1996-2003: Lecturer, Department of Geography, Durham University
2003-2005: Lecturer, School of Geography and Environment, Birkbeck College, University of London
2005-6: Senior Lecturer, School of Geography and Environment, Birkbeck College, University of London
2006-2009: Lecturer, Department of Geography, Cambridge University
2009-present: Senior Lecturer, Department of Geography, Cambridge University

Qualifications

1989-1992: BA Geography, St. John's College, Cambridge University
1992-1996: PhD Geography, St. John's College, Cambridge University

Research

Emma Mawdsley is a member of the Political Ecology group, within the Society, Environment and Development research cluster. Her principal current research interest is:

The (re-)emerging development cooperation partners (also called 'new' or non-DAC donors, including China, South Africa, Brazil etc etc), especially India. I am interested in critically evaluating the challenges and opportunities that accompany the growing role and visibility of these non-DAC development actors. I am currently PI on a DFID-funded project looking at how domestic audiences within China, India, Russia, Poland and South Africa perceive their development cooperation activities.
I am keen to encourage graduate applicants who are interested in this field.

Past research has included:

Development politics, including work on the World Bank's World Development Reports; development NGOs; the US's Millennium Challenge Account; and the impacts and representations of China and India's deepening relations with Africa.
How India's growing middle classes experience and construct environmental change. Research issues include how they attribute and explain agency, cause and consequence; implications for the poor and marginalised; and implications for environmental politics and environmental trends in India.
Environmental issues in India more broadly, including environmental and regional politics in Uttarakhand, and the contested issues around Hinduism, the Hindu Right, and environmental ideas and practices.

Current projects

The challenges, impacts and opportunities associated with the 'non-DAC' donors, including a DFID-funded project on public perceptions (2010-2011)
'The Changing Geographies of Power and Development: Contemporary India-East Africa Relations' (PI). This was funded by the British Academy, and comprises a range of smaller projects. For more details, go to the BASAS website. Outputs include a paper on India's development cooperation with Kenya (Mawdsley 2010) and an edited volume, Mawdsley and McCann (2011).
Domestic visitors to India's national parks: why the 'ordinary' middle classes (the 'picnickers') are so often excluded from political ecology and mainstream wildlife management analyses of national parks and conservations; and why more attention should be paid to this constituency.
Bourgeois environmentalism and urban political ecology

Publications

Selected publications

Mawdsley, E. (2012/in press) From Recipients to Donors: The Emerging Powers and the Changing Development Landscape. London: Zed.
Mawdsley, E. (2011) The Conservatives, the Coalition and International Development. Area 43 (4), 506-7
Mawdsley, E. (2011) The Changing Geographies of Foreign Aid and Development Cooperation: Contributions from Gift Theory. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. On-line.
Mawdsley, E. and McCann, G. (eds) (2011) India and Africa: Changing Geographies of Power and Development. Oxford: Famahu
Mawdsley, E. (2011) The rhetorics and rituals of India-Africa development cooperation. In E. Mawdsley and G. McCann (eds) India and Africa: Changing Geographies of Power and Development. Oxford: Fahamu.
Truelove, Y. and Mawdsley, E. (2011) Class and water: discourses of citizenship and criminality in clean, green Delhi. In I. Clark-Desecs (ed) A Companion to the Anthropology of India. Princeton University Press.
Mawdsley, E. (2011) 'India as a postcolonial donor'. In Randall, V., Burnell, P. and Rakner, L. (eds) Politics in the Developing World. OUP 3rd edition
Mawdsley, E. (2010) The Non-DAC donors and the changing landscape of foreign aid: the (in)significance of India's development cooperation with Kenya. Journal of Eastern African Studies 4 (2), 361-79
Mawdsley, E and McCann, G (2010) The Elephant in the Corner: Reviewing India-Africa relations in the new millennium. Geography Compass 4 (2), 81-93.
Mawdsley, E., Mehra, D. and Beazley, K. (2009) 'Nature Lovers, Picnickers and Bourgeois Environmentalism' Economic and Political Weekly 44 (11) March 14-20, 2009, pp.49-60
Mawdsley, E. (2009) 'Environmentality' in the neoliberal city: attitudes, governance and social justice. In H. lange and L. Meier (eds.) The New Middle Classes - Globalising Lifestyles, Consumerism, and Environmental Concern.
Mawdsley, E. (2009) Industrialisation, sustainable development and environmental politics in India. In W. Brown, C. Aradau and J. Budds (eds) Environmental Issues and Responses. Open University Press.
Mawdsley, E. (2008) 'Fu Manchu versus Dr Livingstone in the Dark Continent? Representing China, Africa and the West in British Broadsheet Newspapers'. Political Geography, 27 (5), pp. 509-29.
Mawdsley, E. (2007) 'The Millennium Challenge Account: neo-liberalism, poverty and security'. The Review of International Political Economy, 14 (3), pp. 487-509
Mawdsley, E. (2007) 'The changing geographies of China-Africa relations, 1949-present'. Geography Compass (1), March 2007
Towsend, J.G., Porter, G. and Mawdsley, E. (2007) NGO-State Relations in the 21st Century: Implications for Poverty Eradication Programmes in Ghana and India. Oxford: INTRAC
Williams, G. and Mawdsley, E. (2006) 'Postcolonial environmental justice: government and governance in India', Geofoum 37, pp.660-70
Mawdsley, E. (2006) 'Hindu Nationalism, Postcolonialism and Environmental Discourses in India', Geoforum, 37 (3), pp.380-90.
Williams, G. and Mawdsley, E. (2006) 'India's Evolving Political Ecologies', in S.E. Corbridge, S. Kumar and S. Raju (eds) Colonial and Postcolonial Geographies of India. New Delhi: Sage.
Mawdsley, E. (2006) 'Using the World Wide Web for development research', in V. Desai and R. Potter (eds) Doing Development Research. London: Sage Publications.
Mawdsley, E., Porter, G. and Townsend, J. (2005) 'Trust, accountability and face-to-face interaction in North-South NGO relations', Development in Practice, 15 (1), pp. 77-82
Mawdsley, E. (2005) 'The Abuse of Religion and Ecology: The Vishva Hindu Parishad and Tehri Dam', Worldviews: Environment, Culture, Religion, 8 (2), pp. 1-24
Townsend, J., Porter, G. and Mawdsley, E. (2004) 'Creating Spaces of Resistance: Development NGOs and their Clients in Ghana, India and Mexico', Antipode, 36 (5), pp. 871-99
Bracken, L.J. and Mawdsley, E. (2004) '"Muddy glee": Rounding out the picture of women and physical geography fieldwork', Area, 36 (3), pp. 280-6
Mawdsley, E. (2004) 'India's Middle Classes and the Environment'. Development and Change, 35 (1), pp.79-103
Mawdsley, E. and Rigg, J. (2003) 'The World Development Reports II: continuity and change in development orthodoxies', Progress in Development Studies, 3 (4), pp. 271-86
Townsend, J.G., Mawdsley, E. and Porter, G. (2003) 'Development hegemonies and local outcomes: women and NGOs in Low Income Countries', in E. Kofman and G. Young (eds.) Globalization: theory and practice, 2nd ed. Continuum, London
Mawdsley, E. (2003) 'Divided We Stand: Identity and Protest in the Demand for a Separate Hill State', in R. Jeffery and J. Lerche (eds.) Social and Political Change in Uttar Pradesh: European Perspectives. New Delhi: Manohar.
Mawdsley, E. and Rigg, J. (2002) 'The World Development Reports I: hidden agendas and discursive strategies', Progress in Development Studies, 2 (2), pp. 5-23.
Mawdsley, E., Townsend, J.G., Porter, G., and Oakley, P. (2002) Knowledge, Power and Development Agendas: NGOs North and South. Oxford: INTRAC
Townsend, J.G., Porter, G. and Mawdsley, E. (2002) 'Different Poverties, Different Policies? The Role of the Transnational Community of NGOs?' Journal for International Development, 14 (6), pp.829-39.
Mawdsley, E. (2002) 'Redrawing the Body politic; Federalism, Regionalism and the Creation of New States in India', The Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, 40 (3), pp.34-54.
Mawdsley, E. (2002) 'Region and State: Centralisation and Decentralisation in India', in R. Bradnock and G. Williams (eds.) South Asia in a Globalising World. London: Addison Wesley Longman.
Townsend, J.G., Mawdsley, E. and Porter, G. (2002) 'Challenges for NGOs', in V. Desai and R. Potter (eds.) The Companion to Development Studies. London: Routledge.
Mawdsley, E. (2000) 'The Role of Women in the Uttaranchal Regional Movement', in M.P. Joshi, A.C. Fanger and C.W. Brown (eds.) Himalaya, Past and Present, Vol. IV. Almora: Shree Almora Book Depot.
Mawdsley, E. (1999) 'A New Himalayan State in India: Popular Perceptions of Regionalism, Politics and Development', Mountain Research and Development, 19 (2) pp. 101-12.
Mawdsley, E. (1998) 'After Chipko: From Environment to Region in Uttaranchal', Journal of Peasant Studies, 25 (4), pp. 36-54.
Mawdsley, E. (1997) 'Non-Secessionist Regionalism in India: the Uttarakhand Separate State Movement', Environment and Planning A, (29), pp. 2217-2235.
Mawdsley, E. (1996) 'The Uttarakhand Agitation and the Other Backward Classes', Economic and Political Weekly, 31 (4), pp. 205-210.

Teaching

Part IA Society, Environment and Development
Part IB Development
Part II India
MPhil Environment and Development: Environment and Urbanisation

External activities

Membership and roles

Editorial Board Member, The Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography
Editorial Board Member, The Geographical Journal
Editorial Board Member, Contemporary South Asia
Chair, Developing Areas Research Group (Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers)
Fellow, Royal Geographical Society and Institute for British Geographers

Other interests and activities

I was a member of the Advisory Group on 'Global Perspectives in Higher Education', (2004-5). Sponsored by DFID and managed by the RGS.
In 2005-6 I worked with Mrs Sarah Lewis at St Joseph's (a primary school in Redhill, Surrey) on an Arts Council sponsored project encouraging creative thinking. We devised an environment and development project for Year 4 children, based around an interactive website looking at issues in St Lucia. Amongst other things, it was great fun. For more information, see http://www.geojoes.co.uk/