Firoz Lalji PhD Thesis Prize

Learn about the prize

Awarded for an outstanding contribution to knowledge on Africa, the Firoz Lalji PhD Thesis Prize is awarded every two years to the oustanding PhD hosted at LSE. The winners each receive a cash prize and the promotion of their work by the Institute.

2025 Firoz Lalji PhD Thesis Prize Winner

Dr Shingi Masanzu: "Public’, ‘private’ and ‘partnership’: making sense of the persistence of infrastructure public-private partnerships in international development" (2025).

Read more here.

Previous winners of the inaugural Firoz Lalji PhD Thesis Prize were:

Joint winner
Henry Musa Kpaka: Essays on Traditional Institutions and Their Impact on Economic and Political Outcomes (2021).

Joint winner
Richard Stupart: Bearing Witness: Practices of journalistic witnessing in South Sudan (2020).

Director's Prize
Kate Dawson: Shifting Sands in Accra, Ghana: The Ante-Lives of Urban Form (2020).

Director's Prize
Camille Pellerin: The Politics of Public Silence: Civil Society – State Relations Under the EPRDF Regime (2019).

How to enter the prize

Dissertation awarded at LSE within the previous two years of submissions opening (date as shown on certificate)
Any subject from any department is permissible, focussed on Africa
Dissertation is submitted by the host LSE department, with a letter of recommendation from the PhD student’s supervisor (200 words max)
No more than one dissertation can be submitted per LSE department
Where a department has multiple eligible candidates, the Institute recommends a decision is made by the department's research committee
The Institute's decision will not evaluate the number of corrections a thesis required

For more information about the prize, please contact: s.spasenoska@lse.ac.uk

Firoz Lalji PhD Thesis Prize

Learn about the prize

Eligibility and application for the Prize