Thitinan Pongsudhirak, an International Visitor in 2009-10, is a high-profile expert on contemporary political, economic, and foreign-policy issues in Thailand today. Pongsudhirak is not senior in years, but he is in stature.  His career path has been meteoric since he earned his BA in political science with distinction at UC Santa Barbara only ten years ago. In 2001, he received the United Kingdom’s Best Dissertation Prize for his doctoral thesis at the London School of Economics on the political economy of the Thai economic crisis in 1997.

Since 2006 he has held an associate professorship in international relations at Thailand’s premier institution of higher education, Chulalongkorn University, while simultaneously heading the Institute of Security and International Studies, the country’s leading think tank on foreign affairs. 

His publications include: “After the Red Uprising” in Far East Economic Review, May 2009; “Why Thais Are Angry” in The New York Times, 18 April 2009; “Thailand Since the Coup” in Journal of Democracy, October-December 2008; “Thaksin: Competitive Authoritarian and Flawed Dissident” in John Kane, Haig Patapan and Benjamin Wong (eds), Dissident Democrats: The Challenge of Democratic Leadership in Asia, New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. He was Salzburg Global Seminar Faculty Member in June 2009, Japan Foundation’s Cultural Leader in 2008, Visiting Research Fellow at ISEAS in Singapore in 2005.

For ten years, in tandem with his academic career, he worked as an analyst for The Economist’s Intelligence Unit.  He has written on bilateral free-trade areas in Asia, co-authored a book on Thailand’s trade policy, and is admired by Southeast Asianist historians for having insightfully revisited, in a 2007 essay, the sensitive matter of Thailand’s role during World War II.

The international visitors seminar series provides an opportunity for the Humanities Center's international scholars in residence to engage with the Stanford community by presenting and discussing their recent work in a congenial environment. Stanford faculty, students, and affiliates meet over lunch to hear a brief, informal presentation and engage in vigorous discussion. The series seeks to foster the exchange of ideas across borders and across disciplines, with the particular goal of enhancing interactions between researchers in the humanities and the social scientists.

Steven Robins is an anthropologist from Stellenbosch University in South Africa whose research covers issues of governance, citizenship, and social mobilization in post-conflict societies. Robins will give lectures and seminars based on his forthcoming book, From Revolution in South Africa: Social Movement, NGOs and Popular Politics.

The international visitors seminar series provides an opportunity for the Humanities Center's international scholars in residence to engage with the Stanford community by presenting and discussing their recent work in a congenial environment. Stanford faculty, students, and affiliates meet over lunch to hear a brief, informal presentation and engage in vigorous discussion. The series seeks to foster the exchange of ideas across borders and across disciplines, with the particular goal of enhancing interactions between researchers in the humanities and the social scientists.

Anne Simonin is a historian at the CNRS in the IRICE lab (Identités, Relations Internationales, et Civilisations de l’Europe), which is affiliated with the universities of Paris I and IV. During her visit, she will focus on her latest groundbreaking work, published in 2008, Le Déshonneur dans la République, devoted to the concept of “indignity” in a cultural and legal context from the French Revolution to the emergence of the Fifth Republic (1789-1958).

The international visitors seminar series provides an opportunity for the Humanities Center's international scholars in residence to engage with the Stanford community by presenting and discussing their recent work in a congenial environment. Stanford faculty, students, and affiliates meet over lunch to hear a brief, informal presentation and engage in vigorous discussion. The series seeks to foster the exchange of ideas across borders and across disciplines, with the particular goal of enhancing interactions between researchers in the humanities and the social scientists.

Abstract
NRC projects in Africa and learning's in the research practices in low-income communities.

Jussi Impiö is Research Leader of Nokia Research Africa (NORA) in Nairobi. NORA conducts socio-cultural research in Sub-Saharan Africa and together with non-governmental organizations and local universities creates communication solutions to assist in socio-economical development in Africa.

Jussi joined Nokia in 2003 as Senior Research Scientist and has conducted research in the areas of mobile video, civic activism and citizen journalism. Prior to Nokia he has worked as Concept Manager at Clothing+ Corp. and as Researcher at the University of Lapland.

Jussi has co-authored 4 academic publications and holds 10 patents.

Summary of Seminar
Mobile technology is already playing a major role in economic development in Africa.  What might be the impact if that technology was specifically designed for these users? This is the mission of Nokia Research Africa (NoRA); to develop services and devices that meet the specific needs of low income communities in sub Saharan Africa.

There are three stages to the group's work. First, field research is conducted in African communities. Second, the team works on concept design and prototyping. And finally field trials are held and further adjustments made. The team has a strong record of getting products out as a result of its research.

Jussi described three projects he has been involved in recently:

• 90% of jobs in Sub Saharan Africa are microenterprises. NoRA is developing a micro entrepreneur tool kit that will be rolled out in five countries.
• 70% of Sub Saharan Africans are members of informal banking groups where money is saved collectively. NoRA is looking at ways of bringing these groups together to share expertise.
• There is a growing music informal music industry in African slum communities. NoRA is working with NGOs to help understand the dynamics of this.
• The average age on Africa is 18. NoRA's Youth Africa project seeks to understand how youth segment themselves. Over 400 interviews have been conducted so far and the project is due to be completed by the end of June.

When thinking about the introduction of technology into Africa, Jussi suggests that an analogy with biology may be helpful.  Just as when a new species is introduced to a habitat, a new technology will have all kinds of unintended consequences in its environment, not all of them desirable. Therefore it is crucial to think through any potential harms and how these might be controlled. Jussi also suggested some rules of thumb for working in the field of technology for development in the Africa:

• Think hard about what is the exact source problem you are trying to solve
• Make sure you try out ‘horror' scenarios
• Work with local organizations
• Talk to journalists - they are often the best sources of information
• Talk to governments; it is very hard to achieve anything in Africa unless you involve government from the earliest stages
• Conduct long and controlled pilots
• Educate users with the skills they will need
• Don't trust your instincts too much - we can make the mistake of thinking we ‘know' Africa, attributing to it a single culture
• Expect the worst! It is better to have thought through what could go wrong
• Be real(ideal)istic. It is important to understand the magnitude of the problems you are dealing with while keeping motivated by the belief that your work could have a major impact

The health sector's successes in Vietnam have been described as "legendary" by international donors, but there is always the other side of the story. One can question the objectivity of reports from the government of Vietnam, the World Bank, and the World Health Organization. One can wonder in what areas the health sector has failed, who has paid for a "success story" and at what cost, and how much information is well documented and has been made public. Are there "stylized facts" regarding those aspects of health that have been successfully reformed compared with those where reform has lagged? Given these concerns, how can the research community contribute to improving health policy in Vietnam?

Dr. Truong will share his thought on recent socioeconomic development in Vietnam, discuss key health policy issues, and reflect upon his experiences including a research project in which the University of Queensland collaborated with Ministry of Health of Vietnam. Additional evidence will be drawn from a study of the cost-effectiveness of interventions to reduce tobacco use in Vietnam.

Khoa Truong was a visiting faculty member at the Hanoi School of Public Health and a research fellow at the Health Strategy and Policy Institute in 2008-2009.  Prior to that he spent six years as a doctoral fellow at the RAND Corporation.  His research interests include tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drug control policies; the impacts of built environments on health; international health issues; and economic development.

He received his doctorate and master of philosophy in policy analysis from the Pardee RAND Graduate School and earned a master's degree in development economics from Williams College. A native of Vietnam, he began his career working with NGOs in bilateral and multilateral development projects in Southeast Asia. He was awarded a Fulbright scholarship and wrote “most outstanding paper” submitted at an AcademyHealth's Annual Research Meeting (acknowledged as the premier forum for sharing the results of scholarship on health services).

An integrated approach based on a case study of a new neighborhood in the provincial capital of Jinan in Shandong, China

As part of SPRIE's current research on entrepreneurship and innovation in the green/cleantech space, we are pleased to present this seminar in cooperation with the Precourt Institute for Energy.

About the talk

This presentation will discuss an effort to integrate building energy and emission models with traffic simulation tools, in order to develop integrated urban energy and emission models. The assessment of the environmental impacts of transportation systems does not commonly include an analysis of the effects on building energy use. Similarly, neighborhood level building energy simulations often overlook the impacts of the density of the built environment and the configuration of the street network. Based on a case study of a masterplan for a new neighborhood in Jinan, Shandong Province, China, the modeling approach presented here aims to capture the way the built environment and transportation networks influence each other in terms of energy use and carbon emissions. The goal is to develop a more accurate method to evaluate and compare the environmental performance of various transportation and land use projects.

About the speaker

Nicolae Duduta is a dual Master’s candidate in Transportation Planning and Architecture at UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design. He has an undergraduate degree in Architecture and Sustainable Development from the National School of Architecture in Lyon, France.

For the past three years, he has worked as a research assistant  to Prof. Elizabeth Deakin at the Berkeley Center for Global Metropolitan Studies. Recent projects include developing planning guidelines for future High-Speed Rail stations in the Central Valley of California, and advising local governments in China to assess the environmental impacts of new urban developments.

His interests include sustainable transportation and urban design, and his recent work has focused on developing tools to evaluate the environmental performance of neighborhoods, by analyzing the performance of buildings, transportation systems, water and waste treatment and infrastructure.