LSE Africa Dissertation Prize

Applications and previous winners

Every year the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa (FLIA) hosts the Master’s Dissertation on Africa Prize for LSE students.

Old Building LSE

Aimed at encouraging and celebrating LSE's outstanding fieldwork and research on Africa, the FLIA Master's Dissertation on Africa Prize recognises the year's most innovative and significant dissertations that further our understanding of the continent.

Dissertation prize 2021/2022

The Institute is pleased to announce the winners of the Master's Dissertation on Africa Prize for 2021/22. A panel of LSE academics selected two winners for producing outstanding work on Africa. Based in the departments of International Development and Geography and Environment both winners will receive £500 and are invited to adapt their dissertation for the Africa at LSE blog

  • Fraser Curry, from the department of Geography and Environment for his outstanding thesis, On the land of others: Gardiens and entanglement in a changing Dakar.
  • Nora Geiszl from the International Development department for an exceptional dissertation entitled, An Empirical Study of the Impact of Kenya’s Free Secondary Education Policy on Women’s Education. 

Prize winners 2021/2022

Aaron Atimpe: The Long-term Impacts of State Institutions on Norms of Tax Compliance: Evidence from the Asante Kingdom in Ghana

Anna Williams: Symbolic Satisfaction of International Norms: Aid-based Incentive Structures and Reducing Gender Equality Change in Post-Conflict Societies

Ramzi Darouich: Sovereign Default and Military Power: The Case of Egypt

Imogen Fairbairn: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Museum and Media Texts on the: Issue of Restitution in the UK

Runner-up award:

Vivekah Deerpaul: Squatters, SmartCities and Resorts: Neoliberal Spatial Reconfigurations in Mauritius

 

Prize winners 2019/20

We are delighted to announce the following students as winners of our annual dissertation competition for 2019/20. 

FLIA Special Prize - awarded for contributions to decolonising the curriculum

Kristophina Shilongo - Design and Decoloniality: Clout or Cloud? - A Critical Discourse Analysis of Indigenous Knowledge Technology projects

Innovative Research Techniques award

Simon Marcus - The intersectionality of COVID-19: A Quantitative analysis of COVID-19 in a South African urban settlement

Outstanding Dissertation award

Naoki Fujioka - Manufacturing or Services – Which Sector’s Employment Growth Benefits the Poor More? Evidence from Rwanda.

Isabel Paolini - Rights for the Rightless: Synthesizing an Interdisciplinary Framework Explaining Accession to the Statelessness Conventions.

Prize winners 2018/19

We are delighted to announce the following students as winners of our annual dissertation competition for 2018/19:

Allison Corkery - Confronting inequality in South Africa through rights-based activism

Keeyaa Chaurey - Pirates and property: the moralities of branded and generic medicines

Stephanie Cantor - Designing meaningful employment for Kenyan youth

Adil Sait - Local economic development and livelihoods in urbanisation

Tim Hall - The lives of migrant women factory workers in industrialising Ethiopia

Chitra Sangtani - ‘Sustainable’ futures and state-instigated ruin in Cairo

 

FLIA dissertation fieldwork funding

In previous years, recipients of the FLIA's Dissertation Fieldwork Funding are automatically submitted to entry for the Masters Dissertation on Africa Prize. The FLIA puts out a call for Dissertation Fieldwork Funding every year in February-March. Due to the COVID-19 outbreak the FLIA suspended fieldwork for the 2019-21 and hopes to resume this process for 2021/22.

To be accepted for funding students must:

  • Be enrolled in an LSE Master’s programme
  • Provide a letter of authorisation for their fieldwork from their Head of Department
  • Provide a letter of recommendation from their supervisor along with a complete application form

For all enquiries, please contact africa@lse.ac.uk