Author Archives
RPP #9 – Mentor Meeting
I met with Dr. Conca on Tuesday, December 4th from 2:50pm to 4:00pm regarding the progress I’ve made on my research project. The weekend prior, I emailed him my Interpretivist Research Design Sketch, as I decided on Interpretivist discourse analysis…
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RPP #8 – Qualitative Data Sources for Interpretivist Research
I am studying participatory development as it is implemented in slum upgrading initiatives by UN Habitat. The popular discourse within the international community focuses on bottom-up development—led by local leaders and direct input by community members. I specifically looked into…
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RPP #7 – Small-n
For small-n analysis, I have decided to focus on what explains the existence and growth of informal settlements. For my large-n analysis, I tracked development projects to better living conditions within them—a difficult and complicated processes given there was a…
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RPP #6 – Quantitative Data Analysis
For my research project, I will be evaluating quality of life as my dependent variable, and international community-funded urban development projects as my independent variable. The primary dataset I will be using to operationalize my dependent variable is the UN-Habitat…
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RPP #5 – Research Topic Post
I am proposing to research environmental and socio-economic vulnerabilities of informal settlements in Southeast Asia because I want to find out why affordable housing and slum upgrading projects succeed or fail in order to help my reader understand how state…
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RPP #4 – Article Comparison
In “Housing, Institutions, Money: The Failures and Promise of Human Settlements Policy and Practice in South Africa,” Bladlow, Bolnick & Shearing critiqued the People’s Housing Process (PHP) for the ineffectiveness of their projects to build affordable housing to replace informal…
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RPP #3 – Philosophical Wagers
As was discussed in Chapter 2, “Basic Debates and Methodological Practices,” in Abbott’s Methods of Discovery, ontology is the philosophical study of being. Under that broad umbrella, are debates that aim to explain existence and reality. For example, some the…
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RPP #2 – Mentor Meeting – Readings & Research Puzzle
My initial meeting with Dr. Conca was during his office hours on Wednesday, September 5th from 1:30 to 2:00pm. During this thirty-minute meeting, we spoke mainly about broad research interests within natural disaster aid and response. I went over my…
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RPP #1 – Research Interests – Rethinking Natural Disaster Response in Southeast Asia
Applying to Olson Scholars last spring, I proposed a research topic on the role of innovative technologies, specifically geographical information systems, in changing natural disaster response in Southeast Asia. The overarching questions/research puzzles I asked then were: Is crowd-sourced data…
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