
About the prize
The UBC Undergraduate Prize in Library Research is a way to showcase students’ effective and innovative use of library services, information experts and resources provided by the UBC Library. Applications for these prizes also provide students with an opportunity to reflect on their information-seeking experience, showcase their research beyond the classroom, and promote scholarship excellence at the undergraduate level at the University of British Columbia.
The Prize was established by UBC Library to encourage more and deeper use of its resources and collections, to advance information literacy at UBC, and to promote academic excellence at UBC.
Q: Could you tell us a little bit about your project?
My project (The Neoliberal Production of Urban Space and Urban Subjects in India and Bolivia) looks at two cities in the Global South, and the effects of neoliberal restructuring on their inhabitants and spatial planning. The first case is an ongoing megaproject development in Bangalore, India, which aims to turn Bangalore into a “global city” by attracting foreign investment. The second case is an informal market in Cochabamba, Bolivia, which has dramatically expanded since the imposition of neoliberalism in the 1980s. I especially aimed to look at how the residents of these places were responding to the changing political-economic conditions around them in ways that were not always intuitive. By drawing mainly upon the work of Louis Althusser and Verónica Gago, I argue that in order to adequately understand ‘neoliberalism,’ the daily experiences and practices of neoliberal subjects need to be meaningfully considered. I consulted library databases to find Bolivian economic history, census data, and World Bank reports, and acquired much of the theoretical background from texts available in the UBC library. The full paper can be found in Volume 19 of Trail Six, the UBC undergraduate geography journal, which is available here: https://trailsix.geog.ubc.ca/.
Q: What does winning this prize mean to you?
This prize is an amazing opportunity for students seeking to take their research beyond the classroom. It is very assuring to have your work recognized and appreciated, and I’m so grateful to the UBC Library for giving me this opportunity. I am also so happy for my other prize winners, Sophie, Ciara, Ethan, and Ridhwanlai—their projects sounded amazing!
Q: What are your plans for the future?
I’d like to go to graduate school at some point, and this paper actually helped clarify much of my research interests. I am interested in economic geography and political economy, with a specific focus on the geographies of privatized warfare. I want to explore how the outsourcing of war to private companies plays out, and how that changes the dynamics of war and accumulation in a globalizing world. In the meantime, I’d like to work doing action-oriented research on foreign policy, immigration, or something similar.
Q: Do you have a favourite research spot at UBC Library?
Probably the Ridington Room in IKB MAA. Second place would be the reading room on the fourth floor of IKB, or the fifth floor of Koerner. I enjoy a comfortable chair and some quiet.