Wilfred Barnaby Scott

Wilfred's research analyses how planetary systems of extraction are expressed, legitimised, and contested at the micropolitical level, with a particular focus on how narratives of tradition and locality have come to shape resource access in Ghana’s gold mining industry.  

Throughout his academic career, Wilfred has been interested in the politics of development, the contextual variation in its conceptualisation and application, and how it is experienced in everyday life. He began exploring these questions in the context of Ghana’s extractive sector while studying for a BA in Politics at the University of Sheffield. Here, he examined the extent to which government revenues from oil and gold could be linked to improvements in core Human Development Index measures both at the national level and in mine-affected communities. He was awarded the Howard Warrender Memorial Prize for his work at Sheffield and graduated with First Class Honours. 

Wilfred continued to research the micropolitics of extraction at the University of Birmingham, where he was admitted with an academic scholarship to complete an MA in Africa and Development. Working across the school’s International Development Department, and Department of African Studies and Anthropology, he drew on interdisciplinary approaches to explore the impact of neotraditional politics on small-scale mining livelihoods in Ghana’s Upper East Region and graduated with Distinction. 

Wilfred’s work at SOAS’s Department of Development Studies continues to explore how Ghana’s integration into planetary extractive systems shapes, and is shaped by, local politics. He uses ethnographic and archival research methodologies to explore how colonial histories of indirect rule have influenced the traditionalist and nativist terms under which access to mineralised land is contested, and how these politics are reproduced as a form of governmentality. Wilfred is currently conducting fieldwork in Ghana’s Upper East Region. While there, he has been guest lecturing in African Studies at Bolgatanga Technical University’s School of Applied Science and Arts.

• Land rights
• Identity politics
• Extractive industries
• Tradition and modernity
• Sub-Saharan Africa
• Ethnography
• Ideology