Eric Kasper is a former Research Fellow at IDS in the Cities and Participation Clusters. His research brings together participatory social network analysis, systemic action research, complex adaptive systems, and community organizing practice to explore the ways relational structures and social dynamics of people living in urban poverty impact their ability to act collectively as agents of change.
For his PhD research he spent a year working closely with NGO partners and residents of informal settlements in Raipur, India. More recently, he has contributed to research projects on urban climate change resilience with ODI, the Climate and Development Knowledge Network, and UNISDR. Prior to beginning his PhD, Eric completed a B.S. in Physics from Texas A&M University and a Master of Public Policy from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. He has been a community organiser, an independent quantitative analysis consultant, and manager of a non-profit English teaching program. He was also a lecturer of statistics and political economy at LCC International University in Klaipeda, Lithuania.