Julie A. Silva

Assistant Professor
Department of Geography and Center for African Studies
University of Florida
Email: silva at geog.ufl.edu

I'm an Assistant Professor at the University of Florida, with a joint appointment in the Department of Geography and the Center for African Studies. My research interests include economic globalization, uneven development and global justice, human dimensions of global change, and spatial econometrics. I got my PhD from the Department of Geography at Rutgers University in 2005. I received my Master's Degree in City and Regional Planning at Rutgers University in 2000. And I received my BA in English from UCLA in 1995.

I was recently elected to serve as a member of the Association of American Geographers' Economic Geography Specialty Group committee. The purpose of this group is to facilitate the exchange of information and ideas among economic geographers and other specialists. Visit the EGSG webpage to join the group's listserv.

For more information about me, please see my Curriculum Vitae.

Teaching

I am on research leave in Spring 2009 and not teaching any courses. I will be teaching GEO 2500 Global and Regional Economies in Fall 2009.

Research

Nature-based Tourism as a Rural Development Strategy in Southern Africa

Despite rapid economic liberalization, many African countries have been unable to export themselves out of poverty via the agricultural sector. Governments are looking increasingly to tourism exports as a source of growth. This study assesses how nature tourism affects poverty and inequality in the southern African region by investigating two case study countries: Namibia and Mozambique. The analysis will examine the relationship between nature-based tourism, inequality, and poverty at the regional, community, and household levels, while also accounting for environmental, economic, and cultural diversity between and within countries. Namibia is considered a pioneer of using community-based nature tourism as a development strategy, while Mozambique has more recently embarked on the promotion of nature tourism and community conservancy programs. The study design draws on both quantitative and qualitative research methods. The quantitative research includes the development and application of spatial econometric and hierarchical linear models, which will model household well-being and regional inequality as a function of distance to tourism enterprises and other factors. Qualitative cases studies of communities that are located near parks, hunting concessions, and other popular areas for nature tourism will complement the study’s modelling component.

This study is funded by an NSF CAREER grant.

For more information about this study, please see the project web page.

Uneven Development in Mozambique

I investigate local and regional dynamics of inequality as they relate to changing market structures in Mozambique. This was the subject of my dissertation, which won the AAG Economic Geography Specialty Group Dissertation Award in 2006 and the J. Warren Nystrom Award for Best 2005-2006 Dissertation in Geography from the Association of American Geographers in 2007. Several articles that develop my dissertation research have appeared in peer-reviewed journals. One article, titled "Trade and Income Inequality in a Less Developed Country: The Case of Mozambique," was published in the April 2007 issue of Economic Geography. Antoher article, titled 'A Multi-level Analysis of Agricultural Trade and Socio-economic Inequality in Rural Mozambique' was published in the May 2008 issue of The Professional Geographer. I returned to Mozambique in the Summer of 2008 to continue working on this longitudinal study.

This research on trade and socioeconomic inequality in Mozambique has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the Association of American Geographers.

Economic Change in the United States

I am currently working with Robin Leichenko on a project titled "Gender, Immigration, and Trade: An Analysis of Male-Female and Immigrant-Nonimmigrant Wage and Employment Differentials in the United States." This project seeks to provide new estimates of the impacts of international trade on wages and employment opportunities in rural vs. urban areas of the United States. In examining the effects of international trade involvement on firms and workers across the United States, the project will contribute to a better understanding of processes of economic change that are currently shaping work experiences for women and immigrants in urban and rural areas. The project uses a mixed methodology which involves both worker ethnographies from case study industries in addition to quantitative models of employment, earnings, and inequality as a function of worker characteristics and other factors.

I also worked with Dr. Leichenko on a project titled "Trade, Employment and Inequality: An Investigation of Rural Economic Change." This multi-year project was supported by the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, under Agreement No. 00-35401-920. While conducting the research for this project, I was a research associate at the Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau. This work has resulted in two 2004 publications (in Economic Geography and Regional Studies). A third article, titled 'International Trade and the Changing Demand for Skilled Workers in High-tech Manufacturing', appeared in the June 2008 issue of Growth and Change.

External Grants

CAREER Award, National Science Foundation, 2008 (Principal Investigator, $459,129)

Geography and Regional Science Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant, National Science Foundation, 2004 (Co-Principal Investigator, $12,000)

Risk and Development Summer Field Research Grant, Social Science Research Council, Program in Applied Economics, 2003 (Principal Investigator, $5,000)

Dissertation Research Grant, Association of American Geographers, 2003 (Principal Investigator, $500)

Recent Awards

J. Warren Nystrom Award for Best Paper Based on a 2005-2006 Dissertation in Geography, Association of American Geographers, 2007

Dissertation Award, Economic Geography Specialty Group, Association of American Geographers, 2006

Participant, Summer Institute in Economic Geography, 2006

Geography Graduate Teaching Excellence Award, Department of Geography, Rutgers University, 2005

Publications

Refereed articles

Forthcoming. Eriksen, Siri and Julie A. Silva. The Vulnerability Context of a Savanna Area in Mozambique: Household Drought Coping Strategies and Responses to Economic Change. Environmental Science & Policy.

2008. Silva, Julie A. International Trade and the Changing Demand for Skilled Workers in High-tech Manufacturing. Growth and Change 39:225-251.

2008. Silva, Julie A. A Multi-level Analysis of Agricultural Trade and Socio-economic Inequality in Rural Mozambique. The Professional Geographer 60:174-189.

2007. Silva, Julie A. Trade and Income Inequality in a Less Developed Country: The Case of Mozambique. Economic Geography 83:111-136.

2004. Silva, Julie A. and Robin M. Leichenko. Regional Income Inequality and International Trade. Economic Geography 80:261-286.

2004. Leichenko, Robin M. and Julie A. Silva. International Trade, Employment, and Earnings: Evidence from U.S. Rural Counties. Regional Studies 38:353-372.

2001. Silva, Julie A. Making Room for Tomorrow's Immigrants: Community-Based Organizations, Redevelopment and Assimilation in Manhattan's Chinatown. Middle States Geographer: Journal of the Middle States Division Association of American Geographers 34, 73-81.

2001. Silva, Julie A. and Elvin K. Wyly. Between Africa and the Abyss: Globalization, Media, and the Invisibility of a Continent. The Geographical Bulletin 43(1), 36-46.

Non-refereed articles

2002. Eriksen, Siri, Ane Schjolden and Julie Silva. Coping with Climatic and Economic Change. Tiempo 43, 36-46.

2002. Silva, Julie A., Jon Saul and David Kim. Let Maps Tell The Story: PPGIS in the Evaluation of Community Based Initiatives. URISA Final Program and Conference Proceedings of the 1st Annual Public Participation in GIS (PPGIS) Conference, 216-222.

Working papers

2007. Julie A. Silva. International Trade and the Changing Demand for Skilled Workers in High-Tech Manufacturing. Discussion Paper CES-WP-07-22. U.S. Department of Commerce, Center for Economic Studies. PDF

2003. Leichenko, Robin M. and Julie A. Silva. International Trade, Employment, and Earnings: Evidence from U.S. Rural Counties. Discussion Paper CES-WP-03-12. U.S. Department of Commerce, Center for Economic Studies. PDF

2003. Silva, Julie A. and Robin M. Leichenko. Regional Income Inequality and International Trade. Discussion Paper CES-WP-03-15. U.S. Department of Commerce, Center for Economic Studies. PDF

Volunteer Service

For two years I served as an education volunteer in the Peace Corps (1995-1997). I was posted in northern Gabon, a Central African country that straddles the equator. During my time as a Peace Corps volunteer I worked on several Women in Development (WID) projects which focused on encouraging young women to continue and succeed in their academic pursuits.

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Last Updated on January 11, 2009