Under a new agreement between UVic and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), an IDRC office devoted to supporting applied research on development issues in Asia has been established on campus, The office is staffed by Dr Stephen Tyler, a senior regional program officer from IDRC's Asia regional office in Singapore. At UVic, Tyler will work with Canadian and Asian research institutions to develop, fund and monitor applied research projects in priority areas of IDRC support. Tyler has lived in Asia for the past seven years. His publications deal mainly with energy, urbanization and development issues
"The main reason IDRC moved me here is to help strengthen connections between Canada and Asia in key areas of development research," says Tyler. "The resources to support development research in Asia will increasingly come from Asia. In the past, Canada's development assistance budget has provided opportunities for involvement of Canadian researchers in Asia. But to remain relevant to Asia, Canadian researchers will have to provide leading-edge expertise, knowledge brokering, and other valued collaborative services, not just funds. They will have to stay abreast of the dynamic development context in Asia."
According to Tyler, UVic was chosen as the site because "UVic offers a core of high-quality and enthusiastic Asia-oriented researchers and a supportive, cost-effective base for IDRC to reach other Canadian and Asian institutions."
Tyler is temporarily located in sedgewick B131. He will hold an adjunct appointment with the Faculty of Graduate Studies and will be an Associate of UVic's Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives (CAPI). His appointment, which began on Aug. 1, was the culmination of negotiations between IDRC and the University beginning in October 1996.
CAPI Interim Director Dr. Margot Wilson-Moore says, "We are very pleased and excited to have Dr. Tyler among us and are anticipating that he will be a very active member of the UVic community of Asia scholars."
A native of Calgary, Tyler holds a PhD in city and regional planning from the University of California, Berkeley, and a BSc in geography from Trent University in Ontario. He has studied resource and development economics and worked on energy resource conservation and policy for the government of Alberta for seven years. He has also consulted for the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, worked as a researcher with the Lawrence Berkeley Lab in California.
IDRC is a federally-supported independent agency set up more than 25 years ago to build scientific capability in less-developed countries through support for applied research on issues related to development. IDRC is headquartered in Ottawa but has six regional offices in Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa. Many projects involve Canadian researchers as collaborating partners to the Third World institutions who receive the research grants.