The keynote speaker for ICIRD7 will be Professor Jonathan Rigg, Chair in Human Geography, School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol. His keynote presentation will be “Out of the Blue: Paradigmatic Blinds Spots and Explanatory Catch up in Southeast Asia.”
Long focused on development in the context of Southeast Asia, Professor Rigg’s work has centered on understanding the effects of agrarian transformations on rural livelihoods throughout Asia, especially on poorer sections of rural society. His research began in Thailand in the early 1980s and has expanded geographically to include fieldwork in Laos, Vietnam, Nepal and Sri Lanka. Professor Rigg has tracked rural households and their livelihoods, working with labor migrants to the Middle East, factory workers in the central plains of Thailand, and rural-urban migrants in Hanoi. Professor Rigg’s work has also focused on disasters and resilience, and has most recently explored the effects of COVID-19 on labor, migration, and livelihood.
Read his full keynote profile here and be with us to hear him present at ICIRD7, 22-23 July at Chiang Mai University!