Dr. Swani R. Keelson-D.I.A.

Dr. Swani R. Keelson, D.I.A.

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Dr. Swani R. Keelson is a Doctor of International Affairs from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), where Dr. Keelson advanced a groundbreaking framework for analyzing global governance through the twin lenses of deconstruction and semiology. The doctoral thesis—Paper Tigers: Deconstruction and Semiotics of Gender Equity as Signifier in Water Governance Policies – A Case Study in Ghana—reconceptualizes water governance as a semiotic regime: a system of signs that performs equity rhetorically while deferring its material enactment.

At the core of Dr. Keelson’s scholarship is a critical interrogation of policy discourse. Drawing on Derrida, Saussure, and Butler, Dr. Keelson exposes how governance texts invoke signifiers like “empowerment,” “access,” and “inclusion” not as vehicles for structural transformation, but as discursive placeholders—floating symbols that gesture toward justice while eliding institutional accountability. The research offers a rare fusion of post-structuralist theory and applied policy critique, positioning language not as peripheral to governance, but as its most potent instrument of power and exclusion.

Dr. Keelson founded Global Water Promise, an organization dedicated to eradicating water insecurity and period poverty in rural Ghana. The work bridges theory and praxis, translating semiotic critique into tangible strategies for gender-responsive infrastructure, participatory reform, and decolonized development. Dr. Keelson challenges the notion that water governance is a neutral technocratic field, instead framing it as a discursive battleground where power is exercised through what is said, unsaid, and symbolically deferred.

Dr. Keelson’s scholarship and advocacy have been recognized by UNITAR, York University (Canada), and the United Nations, where Dr. Keelson has spoken on the intersection of the global water crisis, gender injustice, and menstrual inequity. This work contributes to emerging literatures in critical development studies, feminist political theory, and the semiotics of statecraft.

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