pathway: Area and Development Studies

Universal Basic Income has been gaining prominence in political and policy circles, including as a response to the Covid-19 crisis. Multiple trials have been commissioned around the world, with many others being planned or requested.

The social and economic benefits (and challenges) or UBI have been widely written about and researched. However, a dearth of knowledge exists on the environmental implications. I propose to fill this gap by examining how UBI could contribute to both mitigating and adapting to environmental crises.

My PhD is an ethnographic study, conducted in a slum area in Dhaka, Bangladesh. I aim to generate accounts of working children’s lives from their perspectives and an understanding of the web of relations that shapes their lives. My study explores children’s understanding of terms such as ‘freedom’ and ‘decent work,’ terms which frame child labour policy. My project is nested in an FCDO-funded research programme, Child Labour Action Research Innovation in South and South East Asia (clarissa.global) which seeks to reduce the most exploitative forms of child labour. I work closely with consortium partners in the UK and Bangladesh.

My MRes year will include ethnographic research in Frome looking community volunteering for well being models.  My PhD will continue to look at community level volunteering; community well-being; measuring change; connecting communities; accountability to communities; INGO legitimacy; co-production and participation

My PhD research intends to examine political activism at the grassroots level on two Middle Eastern and North African case studies. The comparative analysis will approach the topic from a Social Movements Theory perspective to identify, explore and evaluate the performances of major grassroot movements that took part in mass-protests in the 2011 ‘Arab Spring’. Crucially, it will assess how effective they have been in invoking socio-political and socio-economic changes since. The examination of transformations of such movements from 2011 to present will help inform understanding of political developments in these countries, especially on issues like democratisation and authoritarian resilience.

My thesis explores the phenomenon of Radicalisation into Violent Extremism [RVE], with a specific focus on why certain ideologies become more or less accessible and appealing to a community as the socio-political circumstances of that community change. I have chosen the Lebanese Sunni community as my case-study for this research, as their recent history has dramatically demonstrated the propensity for preferred ideologies to change as circumstances change. Of particular interest here is how and why extremist religious ideologies have become increasingly accessible and appealing to communities traditionally supportive of secular ideologies; over a relatively short time period.

My research utilises ethnographic methods to explore how food is used as a tool for community building by Palestinians living in the UK. Theoretically, the PhD engages with anthropological literature concerning commonality, kinship and relatedness. These concepts are applied to the ethnographic data to better understand how food and food practice can be read as an instance of resistance to diasporic living, and as a performance of banal nationalism.

My research focuses on the gendered experiences of Syrian and Iraqi refugees living in Europe. As such, it explores ways in which gender intersects with the changing economic and social roles that refugees experience. Ultimately, I hope to establish how gender affects refugees’ abilities to come to terms with, and adapt to, their new daily realities – whether negotiating changing familial relationships and managing new family responsibilities, living with uncertain legal statuses, affirming national and religious identities, being isolated from established Muslim communities, the adaptation of refugee children into mainstream education, or countless other obstacles that refugees may encounter.