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Academia offers Lo opportunity to link interests
New faculty member combines academic studies with engaged research in West Africa
By JESSICA KELTZ
Reporter Contributor
She grew up in Senegal and lived with her family in France, Switzerland and Belgium. Her career has taken her to three different continents, but Marieme Lo, who started teaching this semester in UB's Department of Women Studies, says she can see herself putting down roots in the Queen City.
Marieme Lo, who started teaching in
the Department of Women’s Studies this semester, sees herself not
only as a scholar, but as an activist who's engaged in addressing the
material conditions of marginal groups in developing countries.
PHOTO: NANCY J. PARISI
"I'm seeing the positives here," she says. "I think it's an interesting place and it has an interesting social history and legacy, and UB is at an exciting juncture."
Lo comes to Buffalo after being a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oxford and earning a doctorate in development studies and a master of science at Cornell University. Before her return to academia—she also holds an undergraduate degree from the Sorbonne and a master's degree from the University of Dakar—she worked for a series of international aid agencies, including the Peace Corps, OXFAM and USAID, as well as with grassroots women's organizations. She sees her academic and professional careers as being intertwined.
"I see myself not only as a scholar, but also an activist who's also engaged in addressing the material conditions of marginal groups in developing countries. Beyond abstract theorizing, I appreciate scholarship that bears relevance to policy, practice and social change," Lo says. During her years at Cornell, she traveled to West Africa at least twice a year to do work in the field and stay in touch with ongoing issues. Senegal may sound far away, Lo says, but it's only a seven-hour direct flight from New York City, so she's able to return often.
Lo notes that going from working full-time in the field, to years of academic study, to spending a year in England to becoming a faculty member at an American institution certainly has been a transition. But at the same time, she wants to use her new position at UB to combine all of her interests.
"Academia is a wonderful place and space for me to combine both teaching and research, and the type of engaged scholarship that's very dear to me as someone from a developing country," she says.
Her research focuses specifically on gender and development, socioeconomic development, poverty, gender inequality and entrepreneurship, and human security. She often looks into the aftermath of disasters—both natural and man-made—and examines how some people and communities rebound, devise livelihood strategies, build resilience and mitigate risk and vulnerability. She currently is working on a manuscript that analyzes the significance of female entrepreneurship in household welfare and decision-making, and the impact of women's assets and livelihood strategies in intergenerational social mobility. Another project looks at disaster and post-conflict reconstruction with a focus on gender-sensitive adaptive strategies and the mediating effect of social capital and social network.
While Lo's research often shows that women in the developing world face more obstacles than men do, it's hard to ignore the fact that she herself has achieved professional success. She says the difference is in her upbringing.
"I was quite privileged to have a family that was very supportive of education and resisted certain social expectations" she says. Lo is the youngest of five sisters, and she also has one brother. All four of her sisters hold graduate degrees and have achieved professional success, she says. In the absence of her mother, who passed away at a very young age, and as the youngest, she had her sisters to look up to, as well as her father, who she calls "a feminist dad."
"He changed the rules," she explains. "We did not have the kind of stereotypical rules where women have to take care of the household. I think the values that he had, for a man of his age, because he's 92, were very transformative."
But she adds, "That's not the case for the majority of Senegalese women."
Since moving to Buffalo this summer, Lo says she's been pleasantly surprised by its ethnic diversity and cultural opportunities, and that she wants to learn more about its social history.
"Buffalo is far more diverse than Ithaca and I appreciate that history," she says.
Lo lives in the Elmwood Avenue neighborhood of the city.
"It's a very vibrant community with a lot of potential," she says, adding that she hopes the success of that neighborhood can expand to other areas of the city and have a spillover effect on the economic revitalization of the rest of the city.
In her spare time, Lo enjoys music—she recently discovered the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra—cooking, dining out, reading, swimming and walking or jogging in Buffalo's parks.
"I'm a curious person, so sometimes I just drive around, too," she says. "But there you have to get the tips from a real Buffalonian."
Lo says that if she could change one thing about foreign aid, disaster relief and economic development efforts, she would like to see her peers in the field listen more to the people they serve and sustain the commitment to gender equity.
"Experts sometimes will assume they have the right answer without really getting the perspective of the people," she notes. "I think they would become more effective just by becoming attuned to the multiple realities on the ground, and the differentiated needs and assets of men and women in various locations, instead of designing programs top down."