MSc Topics

Contact person: Shona Loong (shona.loong@geo.uzh.ch)

Since the end of World War II, billions of dollars have flowed from “developed” to “underdeveloped” countries under the banner of development. In mainstream discourses, development is often framed as a way in which wealthy countries can improve the lives of people and the environments they inhabit across the Global South. An MSc thesis on this topic should take a critical look at this concept, by which we mean that your thesis should strive to uncover the power relations that underpin international development. Specifically, we encourage postcolonial and feminist approaches to international development.
In your thesis, you may wish to analyse the perspective of donors. For example, what discourses does the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation use to frame its development interventions in another country? Or, you may wish to critically examine the effects of development on so-called “recipient” countries, focusing on a specific case study. Worldwide, thousands of large-scale infrastructure and resource extraction projects have been proposed based on donor funds. How have these projects affected local and Indigenous populations, and how have they responded to or resisted them?

Your thesis can be based on discourse analysis or fieldwork, or a mixture of the two. If you are interested in doing fieldwork, you are welcome to come with your own ideas, or to contact us to ask if we have any opportunities for working with organisations in Switzerland or abroad.Past MSc theses on this topic:
•    Gabriela Berglas, “Competing / Complimentary Framings in the National Irrigation Policy in Kyrgyzstan. A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Helvetas”
•    Lara Landolt, “How do Swiss International Cooperation Stakeholders Frame the Role of the Private Sector for Sustainable Development? A Critical Discourse Analysis on the Controversies Around Switzerland’s New International Cooperation Strategy"
•    Sabrina Gabriella Niehaus, “Die Aushandlung der Rolle Schweizer Entwicklungsorganisationen in der Politik und die Bedeutung von Recht im Diskurs"

Contact person: Jasnea Sarma (jasnea.sarma@geo.uzh.ch)

If you stroll around Zurich or any capital city in Europe, you will encounter colourful signages for “no borders” . Yet borders are very real geographies that are crossed over every day — by humans, pathogens, animals and commodities — sometimes under dangerous circumstances and intense surveillance.

In your thesis, you may wish to understand the experiences of those living in the borderlands of modern nation-states where conflicts rooted in both colonial and postcolonial violence play out (e.g. Gaza, Myanmar, Kashmir, Nagorno-Karabakh etc.). Or, you may want to ask how borders mark identities here, in Europe, in everyday life. How, in other words, do borders shape urban spaces, migration and citizenship regimes, asylum centers, and social movements? A master's thesis on Borders will critically analyze borders and b/ordering to investigate the political geographies where citizens, migrants, refugees, extractive commodities, and surveillance technologies (walls, fences, biometrics) are produced.

Past MSc theses on this topic:
•    Daria Alessi, " Internal Borders, Bordering Processes and Intersectionality as Lived Experiences – A Case Study of Refugee Women in Switzerland"
•    Marc Grob, “Experiencing and Negotiating Everyday Liminality - A Case Study of Young Provisionally Admitted Foreigners in Switzerland"
•    Vanessa Seger, “Corona – eine Zeit beispielloser Solidarität? Die Auswirkungen der Covid-19-Pandemie auf das Schweizer Asylwesen und seine Asylsuchenden und Migrant*innen"

Contact person: Asebe Regassa (asebe.debelo@geo.uzh.ch)

This theme focuses on a wide range of resources and the reconfiguration of property rights through practices of extraction, commodification, and exploitation. Wars and conflicts, displacement, and land dispossession are often directly or indirectly linked to resources. While such phenomena may occur anywhere in the world, resources at the margins of the state (e.g., the Arctic frontiers, Amazon rainforests, plantation spaces in Southeast Asia, minerals in the Democratic Republic of Congo, etc.) are interesting sites for doing research about violence, labor and property regimes, mobility, and sovereignty. Although resource extraction in these sites is often framed as a form of "development", it often results in adverse social and political consequences on local populations. Moreover, in ongoing international debates on energy transition, there has been a new “resource rush” for solar and wind energy as well as the extraction of rare minerals such as Lithium and Cobalt for electric batteries. This raises the question of how climate change adaption can result in further dispossession.
 
Based on the above brief description, a thesis on resources may take a critical look at the imagination and construction of spaces as resource frontiers, and the violence and conflicts that arise as a result. Alternatively, you may wish to study the resistance and negotiation strategies of local populations affected by resource extraction.

Past MSc theses on this topic:
•    Thilo van der Haegen, “The Canadian Arctic Resource Frontier: Renegotiations of Space in a Changing Environment"
•    Livio Gerber, “A Frontier of Imagination: The Impact of the Tourism Industry on the Geographical Imagination of Antarctica"
•    Thierry Jörin, “The Potential of Public-Private Partnerships for Actors in Development Cooperation: The Case of Switzerland and the Better Gold Initiative"

Contact person: Benedikt Korf (benedikt.korf@geo.uzh.ch)

Democracies are in crisis in most of the world: rightwing populism is on the rise; illiberal authoritarian leaders undermine the rule of law, and many people seem to have lost trust in the workings of liberal institutions of democracy. But this is only one side of the coin. Alongside these illiberal dynamics, popular uprisings and public protest movements have energized counter-reactionary activism. As a result, societies are becoming increasingly antagonistic, enticing some observers to talk of new “culture wars”. These rising antagonisms are not confined to the most prominently discussed cases, such as USA, India, Hungary, Poland, or Argentina, but characterize politics in many democracies across the word. Much political science scholarship interprets the above phenomena as a deviation from the ideal version of liberal democracy, and caricatures right-wing populism as fundamentally undemocratic.
In contrast, we propose a geographical approach that is more empirical and ethnographic and focuses on the everyday practices and discourses of democratic politics, and the interplay of liberal and illiberal styles of politics. Studying democracy “ethnographically” looks at “actually existing politics”, as well as everyday struggles over positions, resources and discourse, without judging these struggles as inherently undemocratic. A thesis on this topic can include a variety of places, sites and practices. You may wish to study Swiss or other European democracies (e.g. practices of direct democracy, struggles over regional identities, protest movements) or the work of activist groups or controversies over specific policies(e.g. the pandemic measures, the European Green Deal).
Past MSc theses on this topic:
-    Marco Grünenfelder, “Die Darstellung des Jurakonflikts in den Schweizerischen Medien (1964 - 2017)”
-    Eranthos Beretha Grande, “Political Ecology of Populism: a case study of Upper Austria”
-    Livia Zelle, “Klimaaktivismus in der Schweiz: Die Entstehung neuer Politischer Subjektivitäten im Klimastreik”

Contact person: TBC