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Professor Caron has worked and conducted research in South Asia for over 15 years primarily in India, Bhutan, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka and more recently in Rwanda and Ethiopia. Living in Sri Lanka at the time of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Professor Caron spent five years managing and implementing a variety of post-tsunami relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction projects. For the United Nations, she managed a joint monitoring system that kept track of shelter and shelter-site conditions in over 400 transitional shelter sites housing tsunami-displaced families. She was Rehabilitation and Resettlement Program Manager for Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund (ASB Germany) providing financial support, construction training, and engineering oversight to displaced communities so that they could construct new homes.
In 2008, Professor Caron founded the Applied Research Unit (ARU) for the United Nations Office for Project Services providing clients in Sri Lanka's humanitarian and donor community with project design and monitoring and evaluation services. She has worked with World Wildlife Fund-Bhutan, UNICEF, UNDP, the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, CARE International, FAO, and the International Labor Organization (ILO). Most recently, she served as Land Tenure and Property Rights Specialist and Senior Research and Evaluation Manager on land rights programming with the Seattle-based non-profit, Landesa.
She previously taught at Cornell University and has delivered seminars and training programs in applied social science research in Rwanda, Pakistan, India, and Sri Lanka. She has served on the boards of various Sri Lankan NGOs including the Energy Forum and a disability-mainstreaming organization, Equality-Based Community Support and Training (ECSAT). She speaks, to varying degrees, both Sinhala and Tamil and has published a Sinhala-to-English translation of a children's novel. She regularly peer review manuscripts for journals such Contemporary South Asia and International Forestry Review. Her book reviews have been published in Society and Natural Resources, Contemporary South Asia, and Conservation and Society.
Professor Caron returned to academia in 2013 after nine years working in international development and humanitarian assistance in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. As a development sociologist, she returned with a desire to reflect on this work and situate it within her two areas of expertise: political and environmental sociology. In general, her research focuses on the mutually constitutive relationship between the state and society by specifically examining the cultural politics of natural resource access and land tenure and property rights. Professor Caron’s substantive areas of interest naturally follow from this: land and resource use and access within the context of resettlement following natural disasters and in post-conflict situations and resource rights in the context of REDD+ and related global climate change interventions. As an evaluation specialist, she employs qualitative and interpretative methodologies and privilege gender relations and the gendered implications of development interventions. Lastly, as her development practice continues to include impact and performance evaluations of natural resource and land tenure programming, her latest research works to advance the nature and methods of evaluation in cross-cultural settings.
Degrees
- Ph.D. in Development Sociology, Cornell University, 2003
- Master of Forest Science in Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University, 1993
- B.A. in International Development and Social Change / Government, Clark University, 1990
Affiliated Department(s)
- IDCE
- Marsh Institute, Center for Gender, Race, and Area Studies (CGRAS)
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Scholarly and Creative Works
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Relocation and Displacement in Sri Lanka
Citizenship in the Time of Climate Change: Displacement, Adaptation, and Resilience in South Asia
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Syracuse University
04-15-2022
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2022
Sponsored by South Asia Center, Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs
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Relocated lives in reconstructed houses: Making homes and mobilizing resilience in Sri Lanka
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2022
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Madhanagopal, D. and Salim Momtaz (Eds.), Emerging socio-political perspectives of climate change: Focus on South and Southeast Asia.
Chapter: Relocation as a disaster risk reduction strategy: Socio-political insights from Sri LankaPublished by Routledge/Taylor and Francis
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2022
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Showing up “as More of My True Self”: Gender and Mushing in the United States.”
Published in Journal of Outdoor Recreation, Education and Leadership
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2022
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Land Governance and Gender: The Tenure-Gender Nexus in Land Management and Land Policy.
Chapter: “Women’s insights on bargaining for land in customary tenure systems: An individual or collective issue?”Published by CAB International
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2022
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Why Land Tenure and Property Rights Matter for Sustainable Development
IDCE 332/EN242 Sustainable Development Assessment and Planning
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Clark University
2021-05-10
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2021
Sponsored by Clark University
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“Understanding gender preferences in banana traits may improve design and adoption of new cultivars”
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2021
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IOM Publications Platform
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2021
International Organization for Migration
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The Power of the Seasonal Calendar Method.
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2021
Bioversity International
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Kampala
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The Gender Division of Agricultural Labour in Uganda and Tanzania.
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2021
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Gender-Disaggregated Seasonal and Daily Calendars of Farmers in Uganda and Tanzania
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2021
Bioversity International
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Kampala
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Participatory community wealth ranking in banana-producing regions of Uganda and Tanzania
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2021
Bioversity International
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Kampala
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A Theory of Change for Improving Women’s Access to Housing, Land and Property (HLP).
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2021
International Organization for Migration.
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Juba
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Customary law, norms and practices and other factors that enable and constrain women’s access to housing, land and property (HLP) in South Sudan: A Desk Review
February
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2021
International Organization for Migration
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Juba
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“Who’s Governing Community Forests? Gendered Participation in Liberian Forest Management.”
July
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2020
World Resources Institute
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Washington, DC
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The Handbook of Gender in Asia.
Chapter: Gendering Work and Labor in the Agriculture Sector, a focus on South Asia”Published by Edward Elgar Publishing
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2020
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“Gender and Trait preferences for banana cultivation and use in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Literature Review.”
Published in Economic Botany
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2020
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Hosting Families in Urban Environments
IDCE 30107 Development, Urban Refugees and Forced Migrants
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Worcester, MA
October
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2019
Sponsored by Clark University
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Making relocation villages: Social networks, leadership and kin relations in the aftermath war and natural disaster.
48th Annual Conference on South Asia
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Madison, Wisconsin
October 2019
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2019
Sponsored by South Asian Studies Association
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Awards & Grants
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Seeding Food Resilience though Anchor Institutions
United States Department of Agriculture
Jan. 20, 2021 - Mar. 31, 2023
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Housing and Resilience in PR
Clark Faculty Development Grant
Sep. 1, 2020 - Mar. 31, 2021
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CO-CREATING RESEARCH AND EDUCATION CAPACITIES TO UNDERSTAND, VISUALIZE AND MITIGATE CLIMATE-CHANGE IMPACT CASCADES AND INEQUITIES IN CENTRAL MEXICO
National Science Foundation
Apr. 1, 2023
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Food stewardship of plant diversity for food security under climate change
National Science Foundation
Dec. 22, 2022
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Food stewardship of plant diversity for food security under climate change
National Science Foundation
Nov. 16, 2020
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Rural livelihoods in crisis: strategies for diversification of the local/regional food system and regional economy
USDA
Jan. 1, 2020
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Comparative informality and institutional mechanisms for its reduction: Comparing Puerto Rico and Sri Lanka
Lincoln Land Institute
Jul. 3, 2019
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Dean's Leadership Fellowship
Clark University
2020
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