Inaugural Lecture Series: Professors Pallavi Roy and Zoë Marriage
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
6:00 pm to 8:00 pm
- Venue
- SOAS Gallery
- Room
- SOAS Gallery Lecture Theatre
- Event type
- Lecture
About this event
Professor Pallavi Roy and Professor Zoë Marriage from the Department of Politics and International Studies deliver their inaugural lectures on two different and distinctive themes.
Professor Roy's inaugural lecture is titled 'Anti-Corruption as a business case: Creating incentives for SMES to follow rules and still make money'. This lecture looks at how SMEs prefer not to engage in egregious rule-breaking but often do so to survive. Anti-corruption policies that ease operational constraints can enhance competitiveness and reduce corruption. Evidence from Nigeria shows unreliable electricity imposes heavy losses, pushing SMEs towards costly, unsafe self-generation that both reflects and reinforces corruption.
Professor Roy presents new ways of thinking about anti-corruption that include viable supply alternatives aligned with internal, informal governance arrangements to offer a win-win: stronger firms, more jobs, and lower corruption.
Professor Marriage's inaugural lecture will be on 'Progressive security: critique, resistance, collaboration'. This lecture explores how people experience insecurity and promote their priorities and power when facing overwhelming threats. The concept of progressive security encompasses critiques, resistance and collaboration as a means of supporting the security aspirations of vulnerable communities expressed in everyday and creative activities and provides reflections on research in insecure and violent contexts.
About the speakers
Professor Pallavi Roy
Pallavi Roy is a Professor of Political Economy at SOAS. Her research is on the application of institutional economics and in particular the political settlements framework to governance, and the political economy of late development. She is particularly interested in how governance and growth are inherently political processes and not largely technical processes. She is Co-Director of the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office’s (FCDO) £6 million Anti-Corruption Evidence (ACE) research partnership consortium working primarily in Bangladesh and Nigeria, in sectors like electricity, renewables, extractives, primary healthcare, and digital governance. She has worked across developing countries and has extensive experience of working with funders and research organisations like the FCDO, World Bank, UNESCAP, and Agence Francaise de Developpement.
Professor Zoë Marriage
Zoë Marriage is a Professor of Security and International Development at SOAS. Her research investigates the relationship between development and conflict, analysing processes of humanitarian assistance, people’s experiences of unrelenting war violence, and artistic representations of historical and contemporary struggle. Zoë conducted research in countries at war in the early 2000s, in the Democratic Republic of Congo until 2013, and more recently in Northeastern Brazil.
SOAS Inaugural Lecture Series
The SOAS Inaugural Lecture Series recognises that research is an integral part of university life and offers a platform for newly appointed and promoted professors to share their significant contributions to their field while also showcasing the overall strength, depth, and vitality of research at SOAS.
