February 2025
Navigating Global Challenges: Humanitarian Relief, Equity, and Justice
Abby Maxman, Oxfam America
February 12, 2025
3:30 pm - 5:00 pm
This presentation will delve into the President and CEO of Oxfam America’s journey working across various countries, focusing on the intersection of humanitarian relief with issues of equity and justice. It will explore critical areas such as global health, climate adaptation, and disaster recovery, highlighting how inclusive and equitable approaches can enhance the effectiveness of humanitarian efforts. Through real-world examples, the presentation will provide an understanding of the complexities and opportunities in addressing global challenges.
Abby Maxman is the President and CEO of Oxfam America, where she drives a vision of global justice and equality. With over 30 years in the field of international humanitarian and development policy and practice, Maxman has been at the forefront of addressing complex global issues through an intersectional approach to humanitarian relief and development. Her leadership is rooted in Oxfam America’s mission to fight inequality to end poverty and injustice, reflecting a deep understanding that crises have multiple causes and that comprehensive solutions are essential to achieving a future where everyone can thrive, not just survive.
At Oxfam America, Maxman is reshaping the organization to better represent and serve diverse communities. She emphasizes gender and climate justice and champions an anti-racist, values-driven culture. Her leadership is characterized by a systems approach to tackling poverty and inequality, advocating for justice at all levels.
Maxman also plays a significant role in the global development sector, representing Oxfam on various international boards and committees and having served as Chair of the Boards of Interaction and the Chair of the Steering Committee for Humanitarian Response. She holds a BA in History and Political Science, a Master’s in International Administration, and several honorary doctorates.
Collaborative Learning to Confront Climate Coloniality and Decolonize Global Futures
November 8, 2024
Odeum A & B, Rubin Campus Center
12 - 1:30 pm
Amidst growing ecological crises and climate-influenced worsening disasters, the need to confront systems that perpetuate and exacerbate impacts appears to be a unanimous global desire. Yet that is not necessarily the case. Climate coloniality disrupts simplistic narratives of climate justice or the understanding of what just global futures could be. Climate Coloniality reproduces the hauntings of colonialism and imperialism, thereby complicating climate politics at global and local scales. This requires decolonizing both epistemic violence's and material outcomes for meaningful climate justice. Collaborative learning and education focused on community-based praxis and ethics of care offer possibilities for more just futures.
Farhana Sultana is Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. Dr. Sultana is an internationally recognized interdisciplinary scholar, author and teacher of political ecology, post‐colonial development, social and climate justice, decolonizing knowledge, and transnational feminisms. Her research and scholar-activism draw from her experiences of having lived and worked on three continents as well as from her backgrounds in the natural sciences, social sciences, and policy experience. Author of several dozen publications, her latest book is “Confronting Climate Coloniality: Decolonizing Pathways for Climate Justice” (2024). Dr. Sultana graduated Cum Laude from Princeton University (in Geosciences and Environmental Studies) and obtained her Masters and PhD (in Geography) from the University of Minnesota, where she was a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellow. For recognition of her path-breaking research and public engagement, she was awarded the Glenda Laws Award from the American Association of Geographers for “outstanding contributions to geographic research on social issues” in 2019 and honored as an Elevate Geo Fellow in 2023. Further information: https://www.farhanasultana.com
September 25, 2024
Can Machine Learning (NLP, LLM) Make Policy Research more “Reflexive”?
September 25, 2024
Unity Hall 500
3:30 pm - 5:00 pm
This talk will discuss the potential of making policy research more “reflexive” by combining qualitative and quantitative methods and employing Natural Language Processing (NLP) methods and LLMs to reduce the distance between researchers and the people they study. This can substantially increase the relevance of research by bringing it closer to lived realities and thus improve policy effectiveness. The talk will provide a general overview of this idea and illustrate it with two examples: (1) On deliberative democracy, and (2) On understanding human aspirations. It will also show that there are pitfalls from over-relying on NLP and LLMs without critical human input.
Vijayendra Rao is a Lead Economist in the Development Research Group of the World Bank who works at the intersection of scholarship and practice. He integrates his training in economics with theories and methods from anthropology, sociology and political science to study the social, cultural, and political context of extreme poverty in developing countries. His books include Oral Democracy, Localizing Development: Does Participation Work?, and Culture and Public Action (edited). His articles have been published in the leading journals in Economics, Political Science, Sociology and Development Studies. His policy work has focused on issues of bottom-up participation, local democracy and gender. He is Chair of the Advisory Committee of the program on Boundaries, Membership and Belonging at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.