Thomas Ponniah

Clark University

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.

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  • Another World is Possible

    Popular Alternatives to Globalization at the World Social Forum

    Edited by William Fisher and Thomas Ponniah     December 2001

    The collection explains the history and significance of the World Social Forum, held each year in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and brings together the most important themes and voices expressed by the 30,000 members of citizens’ movements who take part. Their power emerges from the range of disparate activists and organizations – indigenous groups, trade unions, environmentalists, women’s organizations, church groups, students – that make up the global justice movement. This book assembles some of the constructive thinking around key issues: how to produce wealth and manage economies in the interest of people; social justice; environmental sustainability; affirmation of civil society and public space; democracy and ethical political action. The results point to a very different human – and humane – future.