LawGov Research Carnival #2: Dr Chris O'Connell
Dr Chris O’Connell is a CAROLINE Research Fellow at the School of Law and Government at Dublin City University. Chris is the Principal Investigator of a research project entitled ‘Contemporary Slavery in an Era of Climate Change: State and Civil Society Responses in the Andean Region’, which is co-funded by the European Commission and the Irish Research Council. Chris holds a PhD in Political Science from Dublin City University and is a specialist in Latin American politics, with a focus on the Andean region. His thesis analysed the influence of civil society on the environmental and development policies of leftist presidents in Latin America. His research interests centre on alternative and sustainable models of development and their political realisation.
Chris is committed to engaged research that can make an impact on real-world situations. For example, his current research project was developed in collaboration with Anti-Slavery International, the world’s oldest human rights organisation. The project focuses on the relationship between and responses to climate change, environmental degradation and contemporary slavery in Peru and Bolivia. Contemporary slavery is an increasingly prominent global development issue and centres on severe forms of exploitation, including forced labour, human trafficking and debt bondage. Chris was recently interviewed by the environmental think tank Earth Refuge regarding his research findings.
Chris carried out field research and conducted semi-structured interview with state officials and civil society representatives in both countries. He is currently working on both academic and policy-oriented publications arising from this research. This research has been discussed at the UN Human Rights Council and Chris has given evidence to a UK All-Party Parliamentary Group regarding his findings.
In terms of research approach, Chris believes in the importance of inter-disciplinary collaboration for tackling the planet’s most pressing issues. For example, Chris has collaborated with ecologists, agronomists and activists on an article that conducted a historical analysis of agro-ecological organic farming in Ecuador, which is one of the few countries in the world to have institutionalised the concept of food sovereignty. More recently, Chris formed part of a large, inter-disciplinary global team of researchers that assessed the human rights and environmental sustainability of the proposed EU-Mercosur trade deal. The findings that the proposed agreement failed the ‘sustainability test’ gained significant media attention in Ireland and Latin America.
For his PhD research, Chris focussed on the issue of ‘policy switching’ by left populist presidents in Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru. This research focussed in particular on the influence of mobilised civil society on policy outcomes in fields relating to development, including mining, infrastructure, agriculture and indigenous rights. For this research, Chris conducted extensive field work in all three countries, conducting semi-structured interviews with policy-makers, state officials, NGOs and social movements. Chris is now in the process of converting the thesis into a book.
Chris has a particular interest in action-oriented teaching and learning pedagogies, and has published an article (with another forthcoming) on the role of participatory education in fostering alternative development models and practices. Chris has an extensive and varied teaching background in both formal and non-formal sectors, and has led courses at both undergraduate and post-graduate levels at DCU.
Twitter: @ChrisO_Connell
DCU Profile page: https://www.dcu.ie/lawandgovernment/people/christopher-oconnell
Doras Profile page: http://doras.dcu.ie/view/people/O=27Connell=3AChris=3A=3A.html