2009 Gill-Chin Lim Award for the Best Dissertation on International Planning announced
The Gill-Chin Lim Award for the Best Dissertation on International Planning recognizes superior scholarship in a doctoral dissertation completed by a student enrolled in an ACSP-member school. The 2009 Award Committee members were: Diane Davis (Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Peter Marcuse (Emeritus Professor, Columbia University), and Sukumar Ganapati (Assistant Professor, Florida International University; chair of the committee).
The Award Committee chose Dr. Anupama Mann, a graduate of the School of Policy, Planning, and Development, University of Southern California, as the winner of the 2009 Gill-Chin Lim Award. Her dissertation entitled “A Megaproject Matrix: Ideology, Discourse and Regulation in the Delhi Metro Rail” offers a detailed case study analysis of some of the ideological and hidden values in promoting mega projects in a developing country context. Based on newspaper and archival accounts, she provides an imaginative reflection on the role of mega-projects. She questions the received wisdom, with a good critical discussion of the literature on political economy, development theory, and institutionalism.
Dr. Mann will be presenting her research in a special award recipients session at the ACSP annual conference. You can also meet Dr. Mann at the GPEIG luncheon.
The Award Committee was also impressed with the dissertation by Dr. Anuradha Mukherji, a graduate of the Architecture Department, University of California at Berkeley. Entitled “Negotiating Housing Recovery: Why Some Communities Recovered While Others Struggled to Rebuild in Post-Earthquake Urban Kutch, India,” Anuradha’s dissertation is a thoughtful examination of post-disaster planning and its actual results, using innovative broader criteria (e.g. the capabilities approach) for assessment, rather than simply the level of physical reconstruction. Building on a comparative case study, she offers a nuanced and subtle appreciation of the importance of housing class distinctions (owners, tenants, squatters) in the workings and overall successes of a disaster-recovery housing program. Although Anuradha is ineligible for the award since she was not a “student enrolled in an ACSP-member school,” the committee acknowledges the excellence of her dissertation.
Posted by Annette M. Kim on 09/18 at 08:13 AM in (0) Comments
