New WID Assistant Director
Women and International Development is pleased to introduce Carmen Bain as new WID Assistant Director and Coordinator of the Gender, Justice, and Environmental Change (GJEC) graduate specialization program. Carmen is an ABD Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Sociology with a Graduate Specialization in Ethics and Development. In 2001, she accepted a three-year National Science Foundation Fellowship with Dr. Larry Busch at MSU’s Institute for Food and Agricultural Standards (IFAS), which allowed her to begin her Ph.D. studies in sociology. She has continued working with IFAS since, participating in various research and grant-writing projects, as well as presenting the findings at professional meetings and participating in numerous publications of their research.
Carmen recently returned from Chile where she conducted her dissertation research exploring global agrifood standards. Her dissertation, entitled “Corporate Social Responsibility? Reconciling Competing Values for Quality in the Chilean Export Fruit Sector,” examines the social and ethical implications of new retailer-driven standards called EurepGAP, protocols which have established standards not only for food safety but also for labor and the environment.
A native of New Zealand, Carmen received her bachelor and master’s degrees in sociology from the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. She has received numerous prestigious grants and fellowships, both in New Zealand and since coming to MSU, including a Natural Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Grant, the MSU Department of Sociology Achievement Award, and the Walker Hill International Scholarship. In addition, Carmen was the 2004 recipient of the Rita S. Gallin Award for Best Graduate Student Paper in Women and International Development, awarded annually by WID.
The WID office would also like to thank Kari Bergstrom Henquinet, who first came to WID as Assistant Director and GJEC Coordinator in fall 2004. Kari is moving to Houghton, Michigan, where her husband, Dr. Jeffrey Henquinet, a recent graduate of MSU’s Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, has accepted a Visiting Assistant Professorship at Michigan Technological University. She will spend this year completing and defending her dissertation, “Gender and Foreign Aid in Niger: A Study of Local Interactions with Gender Policies in Transnational Aid Institutions,” after which she will seek a university teaching position. We appreciate the good work Kari has done in the WID office and wish her the very best.
