Anna Wood has started working in the Department as Knowledge Exchange and Funding Facilitator. The aim of this new role is to support the research life and work in the Department in all things related to knowledge exchange, impact, public engagement, and funding. Here Anna introduces herself.
I recently completed my PhD in the Department, on new forms of welfare in Senegal, in West Africa. My research centred on two flagship social protection policies – a national cash transfer and universal health coverage – by drawing on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork with recipients living in a small informal settlement in the capital, Dakar. Arising from the ongoing eviction/ resettlement of the site, I am developing my new research on social housing, which many of my interlocutors are being allocated in Bambilor, in the outskirts of Dakar. The photo is of me in December 2022 in front of some of the newly built housing.
The move is part of the Senegalese government agenda to build 100,000 homes to address the severe national housing deficit. This new research will continue to follow the ongoing resettlement of my interlocutors but expand to examine a broader set of attempts and aspirations to make affordable housing available, including with a Senegalese housing cooperative based on women’s savings groups and those taking out loans with an innovative financing vehicle. In this new research, I am planning to integrate ‘action research’ with a Senegalese NGO which has a particular aim to make innovative and participative urban planning replicable within public policy in Senegal and beyond – something which resonates especially with the interests of the new role.
As the Knowledge Exchange and Funding Facilitator, I will be supporting the life and work of the Department in all things related to knowledge exchange, impact, public engagement, and funding. A newly established role, we are in the exciting position of creating what it will be, however the main idea is to act as a kind of bridge between the department and opportunities outside of it as well as helping the department to respond to a changing research and funding landscape. Some of the things I will be doing include working closely with members of the department to develop their research in relation to impact and public engagement, coordinating information and training workshops, and contributing to the strengthening of aspects of research culture, like open research and collaboration.
Part of my role is to support the early preparation of the next Research Evaluation Framework (REF) cycle and writing this a few weeks into the job I am learning more about some of the frustrations that can accompany it. This kind of ‘audit culture,’ for instance, can be limiting and stifling and also inadequate in measuring the social efficacy of a discipline like anthropology (Stein 2017). It also entails significant administrative burden. I hope that I can contribute to breaking down and alleviating some of this, and work towards further embedding the more exciting opportunities that these aspects of research present in a way that suits the discipline of anthropology, and this Department.