Marie Gagné
Marie Gagné, Concordia University
Marie currently works on a three-month consultancy project with Tetra Tech ARD. In this project, she conducts a political economy analysis to understand why a USAID-funded forest conservation project has not worked as planned in Sierra Leone, Guinea, Liberia and Côte d'Ivoire. Prior to that, Marie was enrolled in a Postdoctoral Fellowship funded by the Fonds de recherche du Québec-Société et culture (FRQSC) in the Department of Political Science at Concordia University.
She earned a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Toronto, with a specialization in development studies. Her research interests include questions of land access, agricultural development, natural resource management, and food security. More broadly, her work seeks to understand how global economic and political pressures are mediated and experienced in often unexpected ways in rural Africa. She has published several policy reports, book chapters, and peer-reviewed articles in journals such as the Canadian Journal of African Studies. She recently co-guest-edited a Forum on land deals in limbo in Africa in the African Studies Review. Her current research project examines the significance of opposition to large-scale land deals for electoral democracy and citizenship in Senegal. Keen to mobilize the potential of social sciences outside academia, Marie has accumulated extensive professional experience as an independent expert researching rural development policies. Since September 2021, she has been a Country Research and Engagement Consultant at the Land Portal, a leading organization that generates and disseminates land governance information. Marie also serves as an executive board member of the Canadian Association for the Study of International Development (CASID).