Topher McDougal

Topher McDougal is an economic geographer in his last year of a PhD in International Economic Development from MIT.  He holds a Master of City Planning from MIT, as well as an MS in Geography from the University of New Mexico. 

Topher is currently a faculty member in Economic Development and Peacebuilding at the Kroc School of Peace Studies (KSPS) at the University of San Diego, where he directs the Development Concentration for graduate students.  Topher has consulted for various organizations including the World Bank, Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research (HPCR) International, and the International Rescue Committee (IRC), on private sector development, urban economics, and public finance in postwar and developing countries.  He has conducted field work in Liberia and Sierra Leone and along India’s Red Corridor, where the Maoist insurgency is based, and is in the process of writing up his doctoral dissertation, which he hopes to publish as a book on insurgencies and the rural-urban divide.

• rural-urban divides,
• urban development and conflict cities,
• trade and production networks,
• the relationship between productive and predatory actors,
• state formation and self-maintenance,
• land tenure,
• rebel and other social movements

• In progress. The Water Treader [novel]. 
• In progress.Civil War, Production Networks, and Domestic Trade: The Case of Sierra Leone and Liberia. 
• Forthcoming. Insurgency and the Rural-Urban Divide: The Economic Geography of India’s Red Corridor.  Forthcoming in an edited volume of the 10th Annual Jan Tinbergen European Peace Science Conference, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands.
• Forthcoming. 'Law of the Landless: The Dalit Bid for Land Redistribution in Gujarat, India'. Forthcoming as a book chapter in an edited volume coordinated by the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana.
• June 2010. How Production Firms Adapt to Civil War: The Case of Liberia. WIDER Working Paper 2010/69. United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER).
• (with Ami C. Carpenter). 2010. 'Marijuana Cartels and the Mafia San Diego'. Union-Tribune, 3 June, p. B6.
• 2009. 'How Production Firms Adapt to War'.  Economists for Peace and Security Quarterly 14(2).
• 2009.'The Liberian State of Emergency: What do Civil War and State-Led Industrialization Have in Common?'. Journal of Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, 14(3).
• 2009. 'Violent Conflict in Town and Country'. MIT International Review, 17 February.
• 2008. Change How We Trade with Postwar Countries. In Advice to President Obama. Cambridge, MA: MIT Center for International Studies.
• 2008. 'Building Density for Rural Development: The Case for Rural-Urban Linkages'. Background paper for the World Bank’s World Development Report 2009: Reshaping Economic Geography.
• Law of the Landless: The Dalit Bid for Land Redistribution in Gujarat, India.  MCP Thesis/NGO-published report.
• Spring 2007. 'Development During Crisis: Promoting Asset-Building in Protracted Refugee Situations'.  MIT International Review.
• (With Rajagopal et al.) 2006. From Promise to Performance: Ecological Sanitation as a Step Toward the Elimination of Manual Scavenging in India. Program on Human Rights & Justice, MIT.
• 'The Santa Fé Trail and the Mora Land Grant: The Effects of Trade on a Traditional Economy, 1846-1880'. Wagon Tracks, 18(1): 8-14.