UC Berkeley In Brief

Ananya Roy discusses global poverty and UC Berkeley's Third World efforts on KQED's Forum

22 December 2006

Audio: Michael Krasny's KQED Forum interview with Ananya Roy

BERKELEY – Ananya Roy, UC Berkeley's associate dean of International and Area Studies and an associate professor of city and regional planning, was a guest on KQED's "Forum" show on Thursday (Dec. 21) to discuss global poverty and aid. Her current research project is "Povertyscape: The New Global Order of Aid, Debt and Development."

In addition to sharing her expertise on the topic, Roy also spoke glowingly of UC Berkeley's unparalleled strength in the area of public service and how faculty and students are working to improve the lives of people in the Third World. She spoke of the campus's new Richard C. Blum Center for Developing Economies, which will be dispatching students to the field to implement cutting-edge solutions to crises such as global poverty.

She also told "Forum" host Michael Krasny the story of her former student, Daniel Zoughbie, who is now a Marshall Scholar at Oxford University. As a UC Berkeley undergraduate, Zoughbie pursued and succeeded in setting up 50 micro-clinics for diabetics in the conflict-ridden West Bank to save lives and to encourage a partnership between diabetic patients, university students, academics, medical practitioners and members of the community.

Roy, who teaches comparative urban studies and international development, received one of UC Berkeley's Distinguished Teaching Awards in 2006 and this fall taught a Blum Center course on global poverty. The class was moved to a new location to accommodate the more than 300 students who expressed interest in it. She is one of more than 20 professors scheduled to teach Blum Center courses next semester.

A UC Berkeley alumna, Roy won a 2006 Distinguished Teaching Award from UC Berkeley and also is the author of "City Requiem, Calcutta: Gender and the Politics of Poverty" (2003).