CFD Director of Programs, Marina Lazetic Receives The Dwight D. Eisenhower/Clifford Roberts Graduate Fellowship
We are delighted to share that our Director of Programs, Marina Lazetic has been awarded The Dwight D. Eisenhower/Clifford Roberts Graduate Fellowship. She is one of only four scholars who received this award for the 2022-23 academic year. The fellowship has been awarded to support her ongoing research on environmental displacement and environmental justice.
Her dissertation is Mobilizing Resilience: Forced Displacement and Environmental Justice. Internal environmental displacement occurs in all countries, including the United States. However, most of the recent research and reports looking at environmental (including climate change) displacement focus on countries struggling with poverty and the potential increase in the number of people seeking refuge in wealthier countries. The reports and research projects looking at environmental displacement in the United States and beyond primarily focus on large quantitative modeling or policy analysis of government response and assistance during and after disasters or in cases of mass migration and conflict. We have way less information, however, on how communities themselves react and organize in response to environmental displacement and what motivates them. Marina’s dissertation aims to fill this gap. She focuses on analysis of environmental displacement in the United States and the community responses to it through a series of case studies and qualitative data collection and analysis. Her dissertation provides a new insight on internal displacement and better understanding of the community needs, resilience, and organizing. Lazetic is also conducting research in developing countries in the Western Balkans to better understand community motivations, resilience building, and organizing strategies from a wide range of cases.