Pon Souvannaseng is Assistant Professor of Global Studies at Bentley University. A political economist by training, her research examines state and business behavior in global infrastructure competition and its social, environmental and fiscal implications. She focuses on the intersection of private and public sector actors in comparative global infrastructure lending and energy development in Asia and Africa. She is particularly interested in state-capital market interactions in the financialization of infrastructure and South-South asymmetric dependency.
Pon has held a Mansfield-Luce Asia Fellowship (2020 – 2022) and a Wilson Center China Fellowship (2021-2022). Previously, she was an APSA Asia Scholar and Non-Resident Fellow at the East West Center, Washington DC (2018-2021). She is also a Research Affiliate of the Centre for Crisis Studies & Mitigation at the University of Manchester. Pon was a former Fulbright doctoral researcher in Laos, and UKRI funded post-doctoral researcher in Myanmar & Ghana. Her research has been supported by the Japan Foundation, Luce Foundation, and Bentley University Research Council.
Pon is a strong believer in the importance and value of cross-disciplinary research in addressing developmental and environmental challenges. She served as a researcher at the UN Research Institute for Social Development where she helped launch the UNRISD Flagship Report 2010 and previously conducted research for the ASEAN Labour Secretariat. She currently serves as a Network B organizer for the Society of the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE) and on the Board of the TLC (Thailand, Laos, Cambodia) Studies Group for the Association for Asian Studies (AAS). She holds a PhD from the London School of Economics & Political Science.
Contact
Department of Global Studies
Morison 229
Bentley University
Waltham MA
Email: psouvannaseng@bentley.edu
Twitter: @ponopticon
