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Graduate Profiles

Students in the Ph.D. in African Studies approach a wide-range of topics from a variety of methods. Here, a couple of recent graduates discuss their work at Edinburgh and subsequently.

Dr Tanja Hendriks

What was the subject of your doctoral dissertation?

My doctorate -- entitled The Malawi State in Relief: An Ethnography of Civil Servants Navigating Duties, Dependencies and Disasters in a Rural District -- was a study of the everyday practices of governing of Malawian civil servants working for the Department of Disaster Management Affairs (DODMA).

What sort of research did you conduct for it?

My research was part of a bigger project which looked at the Anthropology of Human Security in Africa (ANTHUSIA). I conducted one year of ethnographic fieldwork in a disaster-prone rural district in southern Malawi in 2019. This was the year in which Cyclone Idai caused massive flooding in many parts of the country, directly affecting more than 1 million Malawians. For twelve months, I followed a DODMA officer in a disaster-prone rural district, as he went about his job. Whereas the literature and my own previous experiences in Malawi largely seemed to suggest that the state was not very active or prominently present in protecting and providing for its citizens, I realized very quickly how central state agents are to large scale humanitarian relief interventions – even when these are implemented by numerous non-state organisations and in a profoundly aid-dependent and resource-poor context. Therefore, my research ended up emphasizing civil servants’ sense of duty and the manifold ways in which they try to do their job to the best of their abilities, despite not having the resources necessary to achieve the results they aim for.

What have you pursued after your degree?

Fascinated by this sense of duty that I found so striking in the field, I took time during my last year of the PhD to write a research proposal to get funding for a postdoc project that would focus on further investigating this. After I defended my doctorate in September 2022, I began working as a postdoctoral research fellow at KU Leuven in Belgium in November that same year. My project, funded by FWO, is called Duty and Diligence in Disasters: Civil Servants in the Climate Change Crisis in Malawi. I am conducting additional fieldwork in Malawi to explore the everyday work of DODMA civil servants at national level in order to supplement my findings from the district level, while also expanding my dissertation into a book. I have so far published two articles based on the fieldwork I conducted for my dissertation; one in Etnofoor and one in The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology.    

Dr Elisa Gambino

What was subject of your doctoral dissertation?

My PhD project, titled “The Political Economy of Sino-African Infrastructural Engagement: The Internationalisation of Chinese State-Owned Companies in Kenya”, was part of the broader African Governance and Space (AFRIGOS) project in CAS, focused on the development of transport corridors in Africa. My doctorate was a study of the development of the key large-scale infrastructure projects with Chinese participation in Kenya, with a focus on Lamu port.

What sort of research did you conduct for it?

My work was qualitative, involving semi-structured interviews and ethnographic observations in Chinese construction sites in Kenya. In terms of interviews, I worked with government officials, policymakers, company directors, and representatives from non-state actors both in Kenya and China. While I began this project thinking that my research would focus on the drivers of China-Africa engagement in the infrastructure sector, I realised that the modalities through which companies internationalise were more crucial, thus leading me to engage more closely with how companies’ embeddedness shapes their spatial expansion.

What have you pursued after your degree?

I defended my doctorate in 2021 and began as LSE Fellow in the International Politics of China at the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), before moving to the Global Development Institute of the University of Manchester in 2023. In the process, I have expanded my work on Chinese companies’ internationalisation, beginning to look at private companies’ internationalisation modalities as well. This led to my current project, titled “African Hubs, Chinese trade, and Global Circulation”, for which I was awarded a Hallsworth Fellowship in Political Economy at Manchester.

Dr Kamau Wairuri

What was subject of your doctoral dissertation?

My doctorate, entitled “Beyond policy accountability: responses to police abuse by people at Kenya's urban margins,” was a study of how people respond to police abuse. Previous studies have showed that marginalised groups – e.g. poor, young men, sex workers and queer people – are subjected to disproportionate police abuse, but there had not been systematic analysis of how they respond to this abuse. My study contends that we need to go beyond the idea of Police Accountability, that is often presented as the solution to police abuse, and consider the strategies deploy when they have been victimised by the police. I highlighted the individual and collective self-help strategies as well as the recruitment of intermediaries to help them counter power imbalances, navigate officialdom, and avoid further harms. 

What sort of research did you conduct for it?
My study was primarily based on interviews and focus group discussions with young men, sex workers and queer people. I also conducted interviews with selected officials in government and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), as well as journalists. Initially, I had designed my study to focus on the victimisation of poor, young men. However, while conducting my scoping field work, I realised that police abuse affected more groups of people who had received very limited scholarly attention. I expanded my study to include some of these groups in order to build a deeper understanding of this crucial socio-political phenomenon.

What have you pursued after your degree?

I defended my doctoral thesis in June 2022. I was appointed as a Lecturer in Criminology at Edinburgh Napier University soon afterwards. I am currently developing my thesis into a book, while exploring the policing of the marginalised groups in Kenya more deeply.

Dr Ismaël Maazaz

What was the subject of your doctoral dissertation?

My PhD entitled "Divided Waters. A Hydropolitical Analysis of Development, Space and Labour in N'Djamena, Chad" was an exploration of the politics of water access and supply in the capital city of Chad. It looked at the power dynamics that frame the water landscape of this city, at the intersection of development studies and anthropology.
 

What sort of research did you conduct for it?

Based on ethnographic field research conducted in N'Djamena, the dissertation focused on the patterns and actors involved in drinking water access and supply. It mostly draws on observations and interviews with water workers, municipal officers and other policy-makers, as well as end-users. The work emphasises that social relations associated with drinking water are entangled with developmental, labour and spatial patterns. It speaks to ongoing debates around urban water politics in the Global South and contributes to challenge the natural scarcity narrative by highlighting how drinking water is intensely politicized.

What have you pursued after your degree?

After my degree, I was based at the University of Lyon in France where I undertook a Saltire fellowship funded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh and which aims to promote mobilities of Scotland-based scholars. This fellowship led to conduct additional field research in Chad, but also in Cameroon and Burkina Faso. In September 2023, I began a postdoc research fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study of the University of Tampere in Finland.