The Department of Global Development Studies has Teaching Assistantships available in the following courses for 2024-2025 academic year. TAships are filled according to Group Preferences set out in the Collective Agreement between Queen’s University and the Public Service Alliance of Canada
Applications are due no later than Wednesday July 24, 2024.
Responsibilities
The teaching assistant duties include but are not limited to grading assignments, attending lectures and tutorials in person, office hours with students, and answering emails. More specific expectations will be covered at the beginning of the term.
DEVS 101-001 and DEVS 101-700 Development Studies in Global Perspective
Fall Term ON CAMPUS and Winter Term ONLINE
Explores the relationships between global economic integration, technological change, environmental sustainability, political systems, and cultural diversity. Introduces essential interdisciplinary perspectives for complex global challenges from poverty to climate change and builds the foundations for ethical cross-cultural engagement.
DEVS 102-001 and DEVS 102-700 Canada in the World
Winter Term ON CAMPUS and Summer 2025 Term ONLINE
Canada in the World will help students build knowledge and analytical capacities in global development, with a focus on Canada. The course examines how processes of global development are differentiated across borders and axes of gender, racialization, and colonization. Students will explore applications of theories of global change.
DEVS 221-700 Indigenous Studies II
Winter Term ON CAMPUS
Indigenous Studies II highlights the resilience and resistance of Indigenous communities as they grapple with gendered settler colonialism. The course examines Indigenous knowledge and governance within the settler nation state and the re-building of Indigenous communities. Topics include contemporary issues in Indigenous healing, art, teaching and learning, Indigenous activism, and socio-political life. Students engage in work that centers the voices of Indigenous peoples.
DEVS 230-001 The Global Political Economy of Development
Fall Term ON CAMPUS
This course introduces students to important debates, concepts and themes in the global political economy of development. Using a political economy perspective, we examine how different types of power relations are formed around the production, distribution and consumption of goods across local, national and international settings. We also examine how these power relations
structure the institutions, processes and outcomes of global development. The course proceeds historically starting with an examination of the ways in which post-colonial countries were integrated into the world economy in the decades following the Second World War. Subsequently, we use this as a basis to examine more contemporary issues including good governance, free trade, and corporate social responsibility. No prior study of economics is needed for this course – we will be concerned with the real world of development, not abstract mathematical models.
DEVS 240-001 Decolonizing Development
Fall Term ONLINE and Winter Term ON CAMPUS
By interrogating concepts of culture and colonialism, the course invites students to question established development narratives, confront Eurocentric biases, and envision alternative pathways for inclusive, egalitarian, and culturally sensitive approaches to global development.
DEVS 250-001 Global Environmental Transformations
Winter Term ON CAMPUS
Examines the relationship between development and environmental change by introducing social science perspectives on themes including energy, agriculture, climate, urbanisation and water. With a focus on combining macro‐ and micro‐‐ analysis, the course reflects on the meaning of development in an era of global environmental transformation.
DEVS 260-001 Globalization Gender and Development
Fall Term ON CAMPUS
This course is designed for those interested in undertaking a critical analysis of the gendered impact of the globalization process and development policies with a focus on women in the Global South.
DEVS 275-001 Global Health and Development
Fall Term ON CAMPUS
This course examines the nexus between global health and development with a focus on preparing students for work on contemporary health and wellbeing issues. It takes a multidisciplinary perspective, but largely from the field of social science, to analyze current global challenges including environmental and social transformations, and changing disease burden. Using case studies, students will learn important concepts and principles in global health and development. Innovative approaches that bridge global health and development will also be introduced in this course.
DEVS 280-700 Global Engagement
Fall Term ONLINE
This course explores current thinking around the motivations for, and ethical implications of, working with communities on issues of social justice, inequality, and sustainable development. Students will engage in self‐ reflexive practices and work collaboratively to create tools and action plans for ethical global engagement in the future.
DEVS 300-001 Cross‐Cultural Research Methods
Winter Term ON CAMPUS
How do we go from an idea or question to designing a research project to answer it? Students will learn how to prepare and design cross-cultural research projects for international development work, to understand and use selected methods from a critical perspective, to understand important elements underlying successful fieldwork and to learn to develop a development research proposal. We will cover research design, choosing the instruments, cross-checking and in-the-field analysis, entering the field, choosing the informants, analyzing the data and proposal writing.
DEVS 302-001 Development in Action
Winter Term ON CAMPUS
The course will also prepare students to engage with various actors and institutions in the development ‘industry’ while being reflective of their own positionality and vision for change in this increasingly troubled world. In short, the course aims to provide students with an honest and open view of the uneasy dilemmas and challenges of ‘doing’ development if they are to realize alternative futures.
DEVS 340-001 Theories of Development
Fall Term ON CAMPUS
This course introduces students to various theories that attempt to explain what ‘development’ is, how it occurs (or why it does not occur) and to whose benefit. Despite the frequent use of the term ‘development’ in academic, policy and journalistic writings, there is little consensus on what it actually entails – or even if some discernable process exists at all. For example, while modernisation theory suggests that development is a sequence of structural changes that all societies eventually go through; post-development theories argue that the notion of ‘development’ is merely a rhetorical device that reproduces power relations between the West and the Rest. To begin to understand these debates – and the political issues at stake – we survey several broad areas of development theory including classical political economy, modernisation theory, dependency theory, neoclassicism, neoinstitutionalism, Marxism, post-colonialism, post-development, feminist theories and global political-ecology.
DEVS 352-001 Technology and Social Justice
Winter Term ON CAMPUS
Technology is a pivotal factor in shaping sustainable development. Many people view technology as a crucial component of development and hold high hopes for its potential to address issues such as poverty, diseases, environmental degradation, and climate change. However, some also recognize the negative aspects of technology and how it can exacerbate existing inequalities, leading to tensions in society, especially in the distribution of resources and the creation of new social injustices. This course will examine both the effects of technological innovation on society and the ways in which technology is influenced by cultural, economic, political, and organizational factors.
DEVS 358-001: Non‐Governmental Organisations, Policy Making, and Development
Fall Term ON CAMPUS
Non‐governmental organization (NGOs) have become key actors in the world of development influencing both the decision‐making process and policy implementation. This course aims to provide students with basic knowledge and skills in preparation for work in the NGOs’ sector and a critical overview of the major issues involved in their interventions. The first part of the course introduces students to critical theories and debates on NGOs’ governance, state‐society relationships and democracy. Special attention is given to the role and effectiveness of NGOs to influence the decision‐making process and to impact policy implementation. The second part of the course focuses on NGOs’ managerial practices and knowledges and the challenges and constraints associated with their growing dependency on external funding. Thus, students explore aspects such as NGOs’ organisational management, legitimacy and accountability, the way these organisations facilitate capacity development, and NGOs future opportunities. Using a case‐based approach, in the third part of the course students analyze the structures, missions and intervention approaches in a variety of international NGO areas such as agricultural development, poverty reduction, climate change adaptation and mitigation, women’s rights, and humanitarian relief.
DEVS 361-700 Policy Advocacy in Global Development
Winter Term ONLINE
This course equips students with strategies, techniques and mindsets that help social movements and justice-oriented organizations contribute to policy advocacy. Through historical and sociological research, students apply core concepts and best practices to develop new understandings about where policy advocacy fits within a broader spectrum of transformative societal change. The course provides practical guidance for designing public campaigns aimed at legal and policy changes toward the goal of justice advocacy in global development.
DEVS 363-001 Contemporary Southern Africa: Development Trends and Challenges
Fall Term ON CAMPUS
This course first provides the historical and regional context necessary to understand urban southern Africa’s contemporary struggles, then examines strategies to address key development challenges and how they may be creating opportunities for new ways of thinking about citizenship in South Africa and the Global South more generally.
DEVS 364-700 The (De) Colonial Struggle
Winter Term ONLINE
This course will challenge students to critically examine the ways in which colonialism and decolonization has shaped the social, political, historical, and economic landscapes of settler states. The first part of this course focuses on the relational dynamics between the colonizer and the colonized, elucidating how this relationship has impacted historic and contemporary understandings of indigeneity and sovereignty. The second part of the course addresses the various ways that both Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples work towards decolonization through processes of ‘unlearning’ and re-presencing.
DEVS 366-001 Land Politics and Health
Winter Term ON CAMPUS
This course explores the complexity of land politics and its implications for health and health promotion at local and global levels. It starts by conceptualizing land politics as deeply steeped in political ecologies which produce and reinforce health inequities. With such theoretical framing, students will learn the situatedness of contemporary concepts and processes in land politics (including environmental appropriation, exploitation, dispossession, and repossession) in broader discourses of environmental (in)justice and sustainability. It will also discuss how power and politics over land access are organized and operationalized at multiple scales to influence longstanding health inequalities. The course will conclude by examining ways in which global health can benefit from equity in land politics, and assist students to examine their future roles in promoting healthy environments and healthy populations through ‘equitable land reforms’ in communities and at the global level.
DEVS 367-001 Climate Change and Disaster Risk
Fall Term ON CAMPUS
The world is experiencing increasing extreme and slow onset climate change events and intensifying disasters. Cyclones, floods, heat waves and longer dry spells are now more intense and frequent, having immediate- and long-term adverse effects on agriculture, water systems, urban living, and food security. Globally, marginalized groups least responsible for climate change are also its most vulnerable. Climate change and disasters thus exacerbate already existing and unjust conditions of vulnerability and insecurity. The first part of the course will examine the ontological framings of climate change, disaster risk, vulnerability and resilience from various intellectual streams such as: risk/hazards, ecological resilience, and political ecology. The second part will explore how these ontological framings translate into practical responses and programs such as climate change adaptation, mitigation, resilience-building, and disaster risk reduction. Despite considerable traction and resources that characterize these programs today, there is heightened concern and unease that unjust conditions of vulnerability continue unaddressed. Finally, in the search for counterpoint pathways, the course will be bookended by visions and platforms that imagine more ecologically just, ‘care-ful’ and convivial futures envisaged by the climate, gender and environmental justice and degrowth-oriented scholars and movements.
Teaching Assistantships are filled according to Group Preferences set out in the Collective Agreement between Queen’s University and the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC 901 http://psac901.org/).
First Preference – Group A
Is for qualified graduate students registered as:
- students in a department or program in which the TAship will be offered; or
- students in an interdisciplinary program with TA budget resources, and for whom the TAship has been granted as part of the funding commitment offered by the Employer.
Second Preference – Group B
Is for qualified graduate students registered as:
- students in a department or program in which the TAship will be offered; or
- students in an interdisciplinary program with TA budget resources, and who are in their first unfunded year of their graduate studies program.
Third Preference – Group C
Is for qualified graduate students registered as:
- students in a department or program in which the TAship will be offered; or
- students in an interdisciplinary program with TA budget resources, and for whom
- the TAship will not form part of the funding commitment offered by the Employer; or
- there is currently no funding commitment provide by the Employer.
Fourth Preference – Group D
Is for qualified graduate students that have previously held a TAship or TFship for the Employer.
Fifth Preference – Group E
Is for qualified graduate students that have not met the criteria as set out in 12.04 A, B, C, or D.
APPLICATION PROCESS
Applications are being accepted immediately and are due no later than Wednesday July 24, 2024. Please ensure you indicate which applicant group you are in.
- Group A and B Applicants
Please complete and submit the Application Form indicating course preferences. - Groups C, D and E Applicants
Please complete and submit the Application Form. In addition, submit a cover letter and curriculum vitae outlining academic accomplishments and relevant experience along with your unofficial transcript to Carrie Roosenmaallen at devsgrad@queensu.ca. Please note that incomplete applications will not be considered.
Posted: June 28, 2024