Maryam Syed

Maryam Syed is a dual-degree student, pursuing an MS in Environmental Justice at SEAS and an MSW in the Global Social Work Pathway. Maryam is interested in the intersection of sustainability programs and social justice. Throughout her academic and professional career, she has worked on understanding the impacts environmental development programs have on local communities. She completed her BA in Anthropology at Albion College where she conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Southern Province, Zambia examining the violence towards communities living around national parks in the name of conservation. She then completed her MA in International Development at American University, where she was exposed to the inner workings of development programs and realized how flawed program design and evaluations are, regardless of how participatory they claim to be. In her current programs, she is focused on how ongoing sustainable development schemes in South Asia may produce violence instead of resilience. She has received a FLAS fellowship to support her language studies. Outside of the classroom, Maryam works for Uproot, an organization focused on transforming environmental education, and is also co-founder of the reading club, Feminists of Color in Environment. As a GASP student, she hopes to learn more about justice-oriented and participatory research in global settings.