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Department of Social Anthropology

 

Biography

I am an anthropologist studying poverty, politics, and development in Dakar, Senegal. Having completed my PhD in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, I am now a Research Associate and the Knowledge Exchange and Funding Facilitator in the same department. Before studying for my PhD I also completed an MRes in Social Anthropology at Cambridge, an MSc in Social and Cultural Anthropology at University College London, and a BA in History at King’s College London.

Research

My doctoral thesis is the study of two flagship social protection policies introduced by the former Senegalese government within its development plan, the Plan Sénégal Émergent (PSE). It examines these 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. By examining the vernacularisation and negotiation of these policies and their politics on the ground, my thesis, which I am in the process of turning into a book, seeks to move beyond narratives of success and failure.

 

My new research is on social housing and arises from the ongoing eviction/resettlement of the site of my doctoral research. 160 houses have been financed through the sale of the inner-city land that residents have inhabited since the 1950s to developers. These new homes are part of 100,000 logements, the new national social housing agenda, through which housing is being built on the outskirts of towns and cities nationwide. Beyond research on the ongoing eviction/resettlement, the new research will examine a broader set of aspirations to make affordable housing available, through inclusive loans taken out through an innovative financing vehicle and with a housing cooptative based on savings groups.

 

As the Knowledge Exchange and Funding Facilitator, I support the life and work of the Social Anthropology department in all things related to public engagement, impact, and funding. The role involves working closely with members of staff and early career researchers across these areas, coordinating information and training workshops, grant writing and contributing to strengthening aspects of research culture, like open research and collaboration.

 

My own experience in this regard lies within fair access and public policy engagement. During my doctoral studies I worked for Trinity College’s access and outreach program as well as at The Brilliant Club, a charity that supports students from less advantaged backgrounds to access the most competitive universities, while my experience in public policy engagement centres around my PhD research on social protection and welfare. As part of my ongoing research on the eviction/resettlement of the site of my PhD research I am starting a collaborative project with two Dakar-based photographers aimed at contributing to the preservation of the memory of the place which will soon be demolished. In my new research on social housing, 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.

 

Research interests

Welfare; social protection; universal health coverage; cash transfers; social housing; the state; politics; poverty; Senegal; Africa; development; cities.

Publications

Peer-reviewed articles

2024. Invoking Senghor: Universal Healthcare Coverage and the Place of Culture in Senegal. Medicine Anthropology Theory. 11(2), 1-8. [Link]

2023. Patronage, Partnership, Voluntarism: Community-based health insurance and the improvisation of universal health coverage in Senegal. Social Science & Medicine. 319, 115491. (Part of special issue: Health for all? Pasts, presents and futures of aspirations for universal healthcare, edited by Janina Kehr, Jacinta Victoria S. Muinde and Ruth Prince.) (link), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115491

 

Book reviews

2024. Urban Displacement and Trade in a Senegalese Market, An anthropology of endings, by Gunvor Jónsson. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (JRAI). (link)

2023. A Slow Emancipation. Africa is a Country. (Review of: Slaves for Peanuts, A Story of Conquest, Liberation, and a Crop that changed History, by Jori Lewis). (link)

2017. Give a man a fish: reflections on the new politics of distribution, by James Ferguson. Cambridge Review of International Affairs. 30(4), 415-417. (link)

2017. Afrotopia, by Felwine Sarr. Africa at London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) blog. (link)

 

Other writing

2024. The case of the CFA franc and a case for South-centred scholarship. Development Studies Association/ European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes workshop blog. (link)

2024. Diomaye’s first weeks. Africa is a Country. [Link]

2024. New Knowledge Exchange and Funding Facilitator. Department of Social Anthropology website. (link)

2023. Geographies of Hope. Development Studies Association. ‘The Politics of Development’ workshop blog. (link)

2022. The State and Social Welfare in the 21st Century. CRASSH conference blog, with Courtney Hallink. (link)

2020. Different Ways of Knowing: Paradise Cinema Interviewed. The Quietus. (Interview and translation, for the writer). (link)

2020. A ‘grand projet’: Senegal’s Universal Health Coverage.’ Special Issue: Health for all? Anthropological and historical perspectives on ‘Universal Health Coverage.’ Somatosphere.

2018. The Ideal meets the Practical. Citizen’s Basic Income Trust. Newsletter, 1, 3-6. (link)

Teaching and Supervisions

Teaching: 

 

SAN4: Africa

SAN8: Environment, Development and Indigeneity

 

Undergraduate supervision

SAN1: Social Anthropology: The Comparative Perspective

SAN8: Development, Poverty and Social Justice

 

Affiliated Lecturer
By-Fellow, Churchill College
Knowledge Exchange and Funding Facilitator for the Department of Social Anthropology
Research Associate
Anna Wood

Contact Details

Email address: 

Affiliations