William Decourt is studying Comparative Politics and International Relations at Indiana University in Bloomington. His dissertation explores the political economy of climate adaptation policy in East Africa. Specifically, he investigates how Chinese overseas development finance affects the economic ability and political incentives for recipient states to performatively versus substantively implement climate adaptation policies that coincide with state-level development planning in varying East African states.
He has received FLAS and Fulbright funding to pursue this work at IU and in Kenya. During graduate school, he also assists an NSF-funded collaborative research project coding zoonotic disease outbreaks in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, and he has written country reports for the United Nations Evaluation Group as a research assistant for Professor Ore Koren (IU).
Before graduate school, he worked in Middle East research in Washington, DC, at a think tank (Center for Strategic and International Studies), a consulting firm (the late Madeleine Albright's firm, Albright Stonebridge Group), and in government (U.S. Department of State). He is from Minnesota, where he obtained a BA in Political Science and Music composition with a minor in Middle East Studies at Carleton College.
William enjoys a good forest hike and playing and watching soccer. In his younger years, he was a classically trained violinist and composer. He speaks French fluently, and he has studied Arabic in Morocco and Swahili in Kenya.
The College of Arts