Thomas Douthat (PhD ’17) has  received the 2017 Gill-Chin Lim Dissertation Award for his dissertation, “Adaptive Efficiency in Coffee Clusters: Resilience through Agglomeration, Global Value Chains, Social Networks, and Institutions.”  The Lim Award is presented by the Global Planning Educators Interest Group (GPEIG) of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP)  annually to the best American doctoral scholarship addressing global planning issues.  Douthat completed his dissertation in the spring of this year, under the direction of Associate Professor Michael Elliot.

The award committee cited Douthat’s use of mixed methods and his important insights and analysis for ecological and economic resiliency. He spent 18 months conducting fieldwork in Costa Rica and southern Mexico studying resilience theory, environmental management, regional development, network theory and sustainability in the Global South. His methods combine case comparisons with social network and regression analyses.

“The project sheds new light on issues of economic resilience and social justice at the global and local scales,” the award committee wrote, adding that his recommendations are “potentially important globally.”   

Douthat is the first Georgia Tech student to receive an award from the ACSP for a dissertation. According to School Chair Bruce Stiftel, “The international planning dissertation award represents an important step on our path to internationalize our scholarship.”

Gill-Chin Lim was dean of international studies at Michigan State University and an early proponent of globalizing planning education. Educated at Seoul National University, Harvard and Princeton, Lim taught at University of Illinois, Urbana, in addition to Michigan State.  GPEIG established the Lim award in his memory in 2004.

Douthat  will present his work at a student awards panel session at the ACSP conference in Denver on either Friday, 13 October, 8:30am – 10:00am or Saturday, 14 October, 2:00pm – 3:15pm.