Lee Mackey, who is currently earning his Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning and is a 2008 graduate of UCLA Luskin's Public Policy program, was awarded a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship earlier this year.

Mackey's research analyzes the rise of Brazil as an emerging driver of regional development and environmental change in Latin America and across the tropical world and is titled "The Rise of Brazilian Technology Transfer, Foreign Aid and Agroindustrial Development." Mackey is performing his research in Brazil, Bolivia and El Salvador.

The Fulbright-Hays award is another in a growing catalogue of Mackey's honors. His other awards include two Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships as well as the Land Deal Politics Initiative for research in Bolivia that he presented at the first international academic conference to examine transnational land deals, the International Conference on Global Land Grabbing at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) in England.

"I construct more robust theory of the development interventions of 'emerging economies' in Latin America by moving beyond the dynamics of the Chinese case to draw insights from new Brazilian institutions of aid and trade in the region," Mackey told the UCLA Graduate Division. "I analyze the causes and outcomes of this process by examining Brazilian aid policies, technology transfer and agroindustrial development as part of regional case studies of the shift into ethanol exportation in Bolivia and El Salvador."

Prior to arriving at UCLA Luskin, he worked on Latin American migration in California, sustainable development in Nicaragua, microfinance in Bangladesh, and political conflict In Northern Ireland.

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