Benoit Ivars

Benoit Ivars is a PhD student at the Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology and a member of the Emmy Noether DELTA Group Project "Volatile Waters and the Hydrosocial Anthropocene: A Comparative Study of Life in Major River Deltas" since June 2016. He has been interested in studying human-environment relationships with emphasis on local responses in the context of changing natural environments and political economies. His PhD project will focus on the modes and effects of the infrastructuring of the Ayeyarwady (Irrawaddy) Delta in Myanmar.

In October 2015, Benoit graduated from AgroParisTech with an M.A in 'Environment, Development, Territories and Societies' coordinated by the French National Museum of Natural History (MNHN). His master thesis focuses on the program of irrigation management transfer in Cambodia and explores the intersections between irrigation organizations and infrastructures based on a comparative analysis of four irrigation schemes. Benoit also holds an M.A in 'Sustainable development in developing and transition economies' from the Center for Studies and Research on International Development (CERDI). In the framework of this master, he researched environmental service payments for watershed protection at the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) of the Philippines in 2014. 

In April 2016, Benoit contributed to a three-year research program (2015-2018) of the Ecole Française d'Extrême Orient (EFEO) in Vietnam which aims to examine, from a social science perspective, the conditions of sustainable water governance within the framework of the Phước Hòa Water Resources Project.