Dr L. Smith (Lothar)

In both research and education I take a special interest in the local-global nexus for the global south, notably where this concerns human mobility. The interest for the movement of people and the way this relates to livelihoods and lifestyles was triggered by early research on the dynamics of rural livelihoods in the face of land reform in South Africa. Research on internal migration in the agricultural frontier of Nicaragua furthered my interest in human mobility, as did research on rural livelihoods for the Agricultural and Rural Development Research Institute, Uni. of Ft. Hare, South Africa. To give further impetus to this interest I joined the Ghana TransNet Research Programme as a PhD candidate. The Ghana TransNet research programme explored the role of transnational networks of Ghanaian migrants connecting 3 locations: rural and urban Ghana, and Amsterdam, as an important city of settlement for Ghanaian migrants in Europe. I was responsible for the urban Ghana project.

Current research interests go out to processes related to changing social configurations coming out of migration such as gender role changes, institutional arrangements of local resources, and post-conflict situations and how these impact on rural and urban configurations. Thus I was involved as a supervisor in the PhD project of Munas, in partnership with the Centre for Poverty Analysis (CEPA) in Sri Lanka, looking at the role of diasporas in the redevelopment of post-conflict regions. I am also part of the New Indonesian Frontiers Programme which focuses on the impact on local populations of changing economic-ecological situations in Kalimantan due to external influences. Herein I supervised 2 PhD projects.

In Ghana I am affiliated to the Centre for Migration Studies (Accra) and U. for Development Studies (Tamale & Wa). For CMS I played an important role in its research and educational development. The relationship with the UDS allows for longitudinal research on rural-urban dynamics.