Researcher at the Center takes part in 3rd Tsinghua Area Studies Forum 2023
From July 3 to 5, 2023, Nifta Lau, a research affiliate at the Center, took part in the 3rd Tsinghua Area Studies Forum in Beijing, China, presenting her research project entitled “Poverty and Education in Times of COVID-19: The Implementation of Education Programs in the Southeast of Chiapas, Mexico”.
During her presentation, Nifta spoke about the changes in social and educational life caused by the pandemic, and about how these changes have exposed both difficulties and deficiencies in the formulation and application of policies at the local level in some developing countries.
Her research project confronts the educational programs implemented in Mexico during the pandemic with the socioeconomic and educational realities of its rural localities.
To this end, Nifta draws on the results of the ECOVID survey on the effects of the pandemic on education, data from various indicators, and five months of field work, during which she administered surveys in three towns in the southeast of Chiapas: Tapachula, Cacahoatán and Santo Domingo. Moreover, she conducted interviews with school staff members and education officials, in addition to meeting household heads in the three localities.
Utilizing this source material, the researcher sought to explore the conditions of distance education as well as the everyday dynamics and economies of households.
Nifta also took part in an internal seminar at Tsinghua University’s Institute for International and Area Studies (IIAS), which gathered together leading experts from different specialties to discuss the potential for developing a specific research methodology for the field of area studies. Attendees included the academics Tim Niblock and Xu Peiyuan, director and chair of the Center for Global Studies at IIAS, respectively, and 17 specialists from distinguished universities in different regions of the world.
