, PhD student in Geography, was awarded a National Science Foundation - Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement (DDRI) grant by the Geography and Spatial Sciences Program. The award will support his dissertation research project titled "Extra-Territorial Sovereignty, Nationalism, and the Politics of Development".
His doctoral dissertation project will explore emerging questions in geopolitics about interactions among extra-territorial sovereignty (the power nation-states exert over people and places outside their borders), state-building, ethnic nationalism, and multi-ethnic contestations over space, place, and political expression. Through an ethnographic case study of Chinese economic and political influence in Nepal, he will investigate the following set of core questions: (1) How do the seemingly banal, everyday, and gendered practices of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ nationalism and place making in one part of Kathmandu reveal the messy intricacies of Chinese extra-territorial politics of development in Nepal?  (2) How do Chinese extra-territorial sovereignty and Nepali ethnic nationalism produce ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ refugee subjectivities in Nepal?  (3) How do place based identity politics and Nepali ethnic nationalism produce contestations between ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ refugees and members of other ethnic groups in Nepal? Rupak will examine how everyday interactions, events, and practices reveal the intricacies of macro-scale geopolitics. In doing so, this dissertation will provide additional linkages between feminist political geography and geographies of sovereignty and territory.
For more information on the grant, see the .