Thomas Ponniah

Thomas Ponniah is a Ph.D. candidate at the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University. His dissertation is focused on World Social Forum alternatives to contemporary globalization. His research interests include critical global studies, development theory, philosophy, social theory, social movements, cultural studies, and nature-society relations. Since 1994, he has been a lecturer and researcher at Toronto City College. He has also been a teaching assistant for the “Global Society” and “Political Economy of Third World Development” courses at Clark University. He is currently a teaching assistant at Harvard University. He is the winner of the 2003 Antipode Graduate Scholarship and the 2003 Davis-Putter Scholarship.

He holds a M.A. in Comparative Literature from Rutgers University, an M.Soc.Sci in Cultural Studies from the University of Birmingham, and a B.A. from the Liberal Arts College at Concordia University. He worked for 5 months as an intern and researcher with the World Social Forum Secretariat in Brazil and as an intern with the Asian Social Forum Secretariat in India.

• Activism & Social Movements, Global Studies & Development