Omo-Turkana Research Network

Alaina is a doctoral student in the sociology department at Michigan State University. Her research employs a political ecology framework to investigate how class, gender, and ethnic power relations shape different stakeholder groups’ engagement with participatory forest and water resource management in West Pokot County. She uses qualitative methods to investigate the role that community forest associations and borehole management committees play in the regional water conservation effort. Her research is based in the semi-arid plains in the north of West Pokot and in Cherangani Hills, a catchment area for rivers merging with the Turkwel and Kerio Rivers, which flow into the southern end of Lake Turkana. In the past, she has worked for a West Pokot-based NGO performing monitoring and evaluation research on the efficacy of a local borehole-drilling initiative.