The Catalyst team met with Shannon Greisman to discuss her upcoming article “Land Grabbing in Laos: The Legacies of Conflict on Contemporary Political Decision-Making” in the upcoming Spring 2021 edition of Chrysalis. In her piece, she looks at the legacies of historical conflicts in Laos that have shaped the government’s policy on large-scale land distribution and concession.
Shannon is a third year student from Montreal pursuing a degree in International Development Studies with a double minor in Psychology and Management. She has always been interested in the cultures, languages, life and politics of countries around the world, which led her to International Development Studies. Shannon has been involved with Chrysalis in the past as a Peer Reviewer, and is currently serving as Co-Director of Outreach and Opportunities for the IDSSA.
Travel has always been a great passion of Shannon’s, and she spent the summer of 2019 travelling in Southeast Asia. Her experiences in the north of Laos left her interested in the political life and history of the country, which she took the chance to explore for a paper in her Politics of Southeast Asia course. Shannon spent time in Luang Namtha province when in Laos and got to see firsthand the impacts of the area’s proximity to China, as well as the many rubber tree plantations. This firsthand personal experience was really a driving factor in her choosing to write about land concessions in Laos. In her paper, Shannon argues that while the rising occurrences of land concessions in Laos have various underlying causes, they can primarily be attributed to deeply-rooted historical factors.
After graduating, Shannon is hoping to get some experience in the field. She specifically hopes to explore some of her many areas of interest, which include capacity-building, refugee and migration studies, and global health, among others. Shannon is considering a legal education or master’s degree in the future, and is looking forward to more experiences travelling the world.
Video edited by Sena Lee.
Read the Spring 2021 issue of Chrysalis here.
