SOAS-Wits Joint MPhil/PhD in Applied Development Economics

This joint PhD programme delivered in partnership with the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa will coordinate a programme of work in heterodox (feminist) economics or political economy that focuses on the way in which mutually reinforcing tendencies of climate breakdown, financialisation, and post-pandemic economic and social pressures affect multiple dimensions of wellbeing, including the institutions, norms, policies and practices conditioning daily life in Africa.

Why study the SOAS-Wits Joint MPhil/PhD in Applied Development Economics?

• We are ranked 27th in UK for economics (QS World University Rankings 2023)
• We are top 20 in the UK for student satisfaction with teaching (Complete University Guide 2023)
• We are top 40 in the UK for economics (Complete University Guide 2023)

The joint PhD between SOAS and Wits pushes boundaries of heterodox economics or political economy by anchoring the analysis explicitly in African realities and confronting particular conceptual frames with emerging empirical evidence. Whether they focus on a micro or macro object, the research projects will have in common a systemic and historic analysis, taking into account, as appropriate, intersecting social relations, mutations of the state and evolving international political-economic and financial relations.

The research projects will hence strengthen analysis that is strongly theoretically grounded while empirically informed, in contrast to current trends in (development) economics to eschew theory in favour of an experimental and purely empirical knowledge base. The research programme will also be explicitly decolonial, by critically querying existing research practices, by drawing on knowledge across Africa, and by explicitly situating contemporary phenomena in their historically evolved (and regionally interdependent) contexts.

Research

For the first intake of MPhil/PhD students starting in September 2023, the programme seeks candidates interested in conducting doctoral research on one of the following areas/projects:

Project 1: Just energy transitions in Africa: what role for private finance?

This call is for PhD proposals that examine critically the role of private finance in Africa’s energy transitions in the context of the gendered financialisation of systems of provisioning.

The project would include an assessment of the ways in which IFI-led policy and discourse on the role of private finance in just energy transitions translate in African policy contexts. It could do this by exploring a comparative perspective across countries or regions assessing the attempts to embed private finance within systems of energy provisioning and the implications for the evolution of energy policy, practices and access. Apart from mapping global-local interactions in how specific policy spaces take shape, the project would seek to explore the implications of particular financing modes for institutional arrangements, norms and access in the energy sector, including by explicitly examining their gendered dimensions.

We welcome mixed methods and qualitative approaches which combine different forms of data, including interviews with key stakeholders, close examination of various policy documents, relevant databases, and relevant academic literatures.

Supervisors: Gilad Isaacs (Wits) and Elisa Van Waeyenberge (SOAS)

Project 2: Gender, work and wellbeing

This call is for PhD research proposals that explore the nexus between gender, work (both paid and unpaid) and wellbeing in the African context and beyond (including through comparative research). The Covid-19 pandemic has revealed aspects of the interrelation between gender, health and wellbeing and work, particularly care work and the different forms this takes in different contexts.

The purpose of this project is to therefore explore this relationship further by considering specific examples. Such a project could focus on a case study country or compare aspects of this relationship for a particular sector, group of workers or individuals across countries. Research projects are encouraged to explore how other identifying characteristics and structural issues impact the relationship between gender, work and wellbeing.

These may include exploration of characteristics such as age, race, income or class as intersecting themes as well as how economic and social policies and other structural factors impact the gender, work and wellbeing nexus. This call is open in terms of the methodological approach of the project and can include primary data collection, analysis of secondary data (including labour force, household and time-use survey data where these are available) or a mixed methods or qualitative approach.

Supervisors: Hannah Bargawi (SOAS) and Daniela Casale (Wits)

Project 3: Disentangling the nexus between structural transformation and financialisation in Africa

This call is for PhD proposals that investigate the nexus between financialisation of non-financial corporations and structural transformation across low and middle-income countries in Africa. In this context, the research will also look at the role of government, specifically with respect to development finance, corporate governance regulations and industrial policy as key instruments promoting structural transformation.

The project would include an analysis of the specific sources and processes of financialisation that emerge and operate across micro, meso and macro levels of economies in Africa, with a focus on specific productive sectors, including infrastructures. The project would include an assessment of the ways in which financialisation has contributed to the reorganisation of value chains and the way rents are extracted at the domestic and international level.

One aspect of this research will be also to analyse the link between these productive transformations in specific sectoral value chains and changes in the state insofar as financialisation is partly co-produced by the evolution of governance systems. We welcome comparative and mixed methods approaches, including quantitative and qualitative analysis based on both primary and secondary data, interviews with key stakeholders and secondments in relevant organisations.

Supervisors: Antonio Andreoni (SOAS) and Bruno Tinel/Sibulele Nkunzi (Wits)

Project 4: Labour relations, financialisation and technological change in Africa

We call for PhD research proposals that explore changing labour relationships and forms of work in Africa in the context of financialisation of the economy and technological change. Over the last twenty years, these economies have undergone transformations linked to financialisation and digitalisation. These changes in modern capitalism have impacted both the core and the periphery of the global economy, including areas where industrialisation is least advanced.

This has had an impact on the contractual forms involving wage relationships and on the organisation of labour in Africa, regardless of the sectors and the degree of formality of these jobs. Moreover, it has also had an impact on the daily life of Africans, retroacting on the wage relationship, and other forms of labour and work more generally.

Thus, much of the working life that takes place in the sphere of production is connected to and partly determined by other spheres, including circulation and reproduction. How does the digitalisation and financialisation of everyday life in Africa impact on the mutations of work in Africa?

Supervisors: Satoshi Miyamura (SOAS) and Bruno Tinel (Wits) Why study the Joint PhD in Applied Development Economics?

Admissions and Entry Requirements

Students will need to apply to both institutions via each institution websites by 15 June 2023. For details on how to apply to SOAS, see the how to apply pages.

Students will need to meet entry requirements of both institutions. For SOAS, this is a "good" Masters degree in (development) economics or any relevant discipline and a reference. For Wits, this is a Masters in Economics or in Applied Development Economics or any other suitable background.

As part of the application process, students will be asked to indicate either SOAS or Wits as their ‘home institution’. This is the institution where students will physically enrol and be based at for the duration of the PhD.

International Mobility

All students will be offered the opportunity to undertake international mobility to and from SOAS or Wits during the PhD, however it is not mandatory to complete this programme.