Research Coordinator
Politics, governance, and civil society in sub-Saharan Africa; non-governmental organisations; faith and development; history of development processes and interventions; issues in international health and non-state actors in health delivery.
Political economy and sociology of globalisation; global power structure and grand strategy; empire theory and US hegemony; politics and development of the Middle East and North Africa; sociology of religion; Islam and Islamic Fundamentalism; social change and social theory.
Director. PositiveNegatives
Senior Fellow of SOAS
Africa; Horn of Africa; refugees and forced migration; post-conflict social integration; violence and conflict analysis; humanitarianism and humanitarian assistance; globalisation, transnationalism, diasporas and remittances; famine and food security; livelihoods in emergency contexts.
Political economy of labour migration, class and capitalism in the Middle East. With a focus on the the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Palestine, and the dynamics of regional accumulation.
Violence and conflict, governance, post colonial state building, Muslim societies, sexualities, (reproductive) health, migration, and community development/transformative education - all explored through a gendered lens. Central Asia, Latin America but currently focus mainly on West and East Africa.
NGOs and social movements, politics and development in Nepal and South Asia, global protest and change, alternatives to neoliberalism and imperialism.
East Africa, particularly Uganda and Sudan, West Africa; conflict and development; forced migration; refugees; humanitarian interventions
Political Economy; Emerging finance capitalism; Privatization; Alternative development; Banking, finance, and development; Mexico, Turkey, other emerging capitalisms; State-capital-labour relations; State theory; Internationalization.
Research: Vulnerability to climate impacts, climate change adaptation and locally held knowledge, the political economy of climate-compatible development, knowing and deciding for conservation and development.
Trans-nationality with particular reference to migration; refugee regime; borders and NGOs.
Political Economy of Development. Agrarian Change in Southern Africa. Violence, conflict and Development. Borderlands and state-building processes. Extractive industries and capitalist transitions.
East Asia, labour relations in China and Vietnam, trade union reform in China and Vietnam, labour and social movements in China, labour migration in China.
Purewal’s interests fall within two areas, both with a distinctive Punjab (India and Pakistan) focus. The first is on feminist scholarship and gender in South Asia, including female feticide and routes and barriers to girls’ education. The second area is the sociology of religion. Purewal was the principal investigator on a large project under the Religion and Society programme (AHRC and ESRC) on popular religious practices and contemporary transgressions of religious boundaries in South Asia focusing specifically on the region of Punjab across India and Pakistan.
Political economy of development, labour markets and informalisation, agrarian change, urbanisation, privatisation, aid effectiveness, Africa, Tanzania.
Political economy of Latin America, social and peasant movements, alter-globalisation movements and social change, alternative development, agrarian issues, and bio-fuels and energy politics.
Gracelin is a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on firm behaviour - particularly how firms in emerging markets can increase worker retention and productivity by altering different elements of the labour market experience, including job security, inter-firm mobility, training, tenure, promotions, wage structures, and social support. She is a Fulbright Scholar and Cambridge Political Economy Trust Scholar. Prior to starting her PhD, Gracelin worked in the public and private sectors in the US, South Africa, Australia, India, and UK. She holds a BSc from the University of Texas at Austin and an MPhil from the University of Cambridge.
Anna joined the Faculty as a teaching fellow in 2017. At SOAS, Anna tutors on the Political Economy of Development module.
Islamic philosophy; Political Islam; Social movements
Maya Goodfellow is a Graduate Teaching Assistant for the Department of Politics and International Studies and Development Studies.
Citizenship, Intersectionality, Caste, Gender, India
Democratisation in Afghanistan and other conflict-affected states, with a particular focus on gender and democratic institutions (elections, political parties and the legislature). Recently this has included work on the impact of Afghanistan's reserved seats system for women, the way elections shape and are shaped by local political landscapes, the internal dynamics of Afghan national assembly, political party institutionalisation and women's role in parties over time.
Ethan Chorin is CEO of Perim Associates, a Middle East and Africa focused policy advisory firm.
Convenor of the Aid and Development unit on the MSc in Development Studies.
Aid policies and practices, role of foreign and indigenous civil society organisations in Africa, issues affecting informal sector workers. Doctoral research on trade unions and NGOs in Tanzania, published as Civil Society as a Conflictual Sphere in Post-liberalization Tanzania. Currently researching the influence of trade unions on labour practices in Sierra Leone and Tanzania and working on issues affecting informal sector workers in Ghana. Worked in the aid sector and on political economy issues in the Sudan and Bulgaria.
Agrarian political economy; sociology of economic relations; theories of development; neoliberalism; research methods; India
PhD candidate in Development Studies also works for the London based non-for-profit research institute, the Pastoral and Environmental Network in the Horn of Africa (PENHA).
Political, Economic and Social History of Turkey and the Middle East with special reference to the Kurdish Question in Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria; Politics and Development Economics of the Countries of the Middle East; Social Change and Social Theory.
The Department Student Officer (DSO) is available to offer information and guidance to prospective students enquiring about departmental programmes of study, and to current students for issues such as class attendance, course work deadlines and submission, as well as mitigating circumstances and timetable queries. The DSO works closely with the department's student representatives and welfare departments across the School to provide specialised support to students in the department of Development Studies.
The Department Academic Officer responsible for: visiting appointments, expense claims, programme & module amendments, web updates, timetabling and any other academic related matters
Florian is working alongside Dr Carlos Oya on a research project looking at Chinese Firms and Employment Dynamics in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Comparative Analysis.
Agrarian history; Late Antiquity and early Islam; historical materialism; and, contemporary India, with a special interest in issues like the critique of minimalist stereotypes of the ancient economy; Marx’s method in Capital; modes of production; the fate of the peasantry under capitalism; and, labour and capital in India’s economy.
Political economy of rural and agrarian change, Patterns of rural and agricultural mechanization, Fairer trade, Politics of global agricultural Science and Technology assessments, Rural development, Research methods. Mainly worked in Nepal, Bangladesh and India.
Populist politics in Latin America and East Asia. Analysis of populist discourse with post-structuralist methods.
Economist focussing on Mozambique, specifically: political economy of economic growth and accumulation, industrialization and public policy.
Professor of Sociology at Texas A & M University, currently working on the reinterpretation of the causes of differential rates of national economic growth between 1870 and 1950.
Political economy of aid systems in Africa; natural resources exploitation and management; regional and global integration.
Politics of development; institutional theory; civil society and democratization; agrarian change; labour; processes of
poverty; and social policy.
Markets and capitalism; rural development; poverty and social welfare; South Asian political economy; field economics
Environmental scientist working on ecological economics and political ecology
Uganda and East Africa; land tenure in Africa; post-conflict transition; displacement and resettlement; agrarian political economy; development and youth in Africa; state formation
Political economy of education and development in sub-Saharan Africa; privatisation of education, secondary education, social mobilisation around schooling, textbook industry; politics of aid and public finance; South Africa, Tanzania.
Art and theatre in conflict and post conflict settings; psychosocial and humanitarian programming in emergencies, participatory methods, community engagement; political economy of violence and conflict, cultural genocide, resilience and survival, representations of violence, politics of memory. Thematic interests in youth, migration, borderlands, Great Lakes, Sudan, Caucasus and the Balkans. Works with printmaking, photography and performance.
Water and environmental governance, especially but not exclusively in China.
Currently Vice-President of the International Water Resources Association (IWRA) and has served as Editor-in-Chief of Water International since 2007.
Humanitarian crises/policies; foreign aid allocation; refugees, conflict and natural disaster crises; international cooperation; European Union Humanitarian Aid policy.
Honorary Research Fellow, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Manchester, UK
The relationships between inequality, growth, and development. A major focus of Stephanie's work explores the effect of gender equality on macroeconomic outcomes. She has more recently begun to examine the gender and race effects of contractionary monetary policy.
Young people’s experiences of and means of coping with violence in North and South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo
Economic security/insecurity, labour and work, cash transfers, basic income, social protection and the 'precaritat'
Political, Economic and Social History of Turkey and the Middle East with special reference to the Kurdish Question in Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria; Politics and Development Economics of the Countries of the Middle East; Social Change and Social Theory.
Macroeconomics and poverty reduction, classical political economy, and labour markets