Jodi York (1999)

Research Fellow, Centre for Social Investment, Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Melbourne

My training and enculturation in Berkeley sociology has opened doors and allowed me a diverse career that has taken me around the globe solving interesting problems in and out of academia. As a visiting scholar at Chiang Mai University, I studied on natural resource conflicts involving farmers, environmentalists, and the state in northern Thailand. As a senior analyst for Statistics New Zealand, I designed better measures of natural resource inputs to economic production,  and of government-provided health and education service output. In my current role as research fellow in the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Business and Economics,  I study social investment (investment intended to have positive community outcome) by large corporations to model how those decisions are made, what investment practices are working and why.  While the subject matter has shifted around, the unifying thread has been helping put evidence in the hands of those trying to improve the social and environmental outcomes in the world around them.

Dissertation Title
Globalized Movements and Local Politics: Framing Natural Resource Conflicts in Northern Thailand