Dr Emily Scott joined IDD as a Lecturer in International Development in 2021. Her (SSHRC-funded) PhD focused on the ways humanitarian organizations working in Lebanon and Jordan navigated gaps between Syrian refugee health needs and response between 2011 and 2017. She studied what made organizations more responsive to the emerging needs of Syrian refugees and migrants, with only some experimenting with new service delivery and rulemaking. Her work has been supported by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council, Fulbright Canada, Canada C150 funds, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, amongst others.
Emily has worked with organizations like the Canadian International Development Agency’s Afghanistan Task Force, the United Nations, the Carter Center, and Doctors Without Borders and in areas of conflict, including East Jerusalem and the West Bank, South Sudan, and Syria. She has extensive experience conducting fieldwork in the Middle East.
Dr Scott is currently Principal Investigator of a SSHRC-funded project that explores global humanitarian governance below the state and in “local” spaces, and the ways domestic patterns of war, violent incidents, and state and non-state control shape global humanitarian decisions about where to act. Specifically, the project examines humanitarian governance, health response, and the movement of aid in the Middle East and amongst Syrian refugees living in Lebanon. She also leads (with Drs Jennifer Welsh and Adam Kochanski) a research project that explores localization in world politics and as a path to sustainable peace. It brings together leading scholars and practitioners from around the world who work in forced migration, the protection of civilians, humanitarianism, and transitional justice.
In 2020-21, Emily was Postdoctoral Researcher at McGill University in 2020-2021, joining C150 Research Chair in Global Governance and Security, Dr Jennifer Welsh. Emily was Postdoctoral Fellow at the Korbel School of International Studies in 2019-2020, where she was jointly seated with Oxfam America. In 2016, she was awarded the Traditional Fulbright Award and spent a year as Visiting Fellow at George Washington University’s Elliot School of International Affairs and Institute for Middle East Studies (IMES) working with scholar of humanitarianism, Dr Michael Barnett.