Photo of Elizabeth HarrisonElizabeth Harrison
Dean of the School of Progressive Futures

Research

My research spans the themes of environmental sustainability and human flourishing in the disciplines of Anthropology and International Development.  My early research concerned discourses of community, gender, and consultation and participation in international development projects in sub-Saharan Africa, principally in Zambia. In this, the intersection between competing ethical claims in the context of unequal power of both individuals and institutions were important themes that have continued to animate and inform my research over subsequent years, with empirical fieldwork focused on natural resources management and irrigation in sub-Saharan Africa, Sri Lanka and Ethiopia; and on both ageing and the construction of community in the face of economic crisis in Newhaven, East Sussex.  I have recently embarked on a new project that considers decision-making for the end-life of wind farms in the UK, based on fieldwork in Devon and Lancashire.

In addition to my academic research, I have acted in an advisory capacity to policy-oriented bodies. These include 3ie, African Development Bank, DFID, FAO, OECD DAC, Save the Children, UNRISD, Soil Association, Joseph Rowntree Foundation. In Sussex, I have been a member of the Senior Researchers Group of the Community University Partnership Programme, as well as working with East Sussex County Council, the East Sussex Seniors Assocation, Trust for Developing Communities, and Meridian Mature Citizens Forum.



 

 

 

Completed Doctoral Students:

Gemma Houldey - Stress and burnout among aid workers in Kenya

Peter Leahy - Being a bureaucrat in Papua New Guinea

Valerio Colosio – Legacies of slavery in a former slave reservoir, Chad (awarded 2018)

Markus Breines - Middle class identity and urban-urban migration in Ethiopia (awarded 2017)

Anneke Newman - Education and religious identity, Senegal (awarded 2015)

Santiago Ripoli - Food sovereignty and development, Nicaragua (awarded 2016)

Hannah Warren – Gender and local NGOs, Ghana (awarded 2013)

Franz Wong - Gender mainstreaming in Oxfam, UK and Cambodia (awarded 2012

Martin Webb - Governance and Social Activism, India (awarded 2011)

Ubanesia Adams - Health policy in the Western Cape, South Africa (awarded 2010)

Dinah Rajak - Anglo-American corporate social responsibility (awarded 2008)

Geetanjali Gill - Poverty and ethnicity in Mauritius  (awarded 2007)

Theresa Ulicki - Gender equity and organisational change in the South African Police Service (awarded 2004)

Iman Hashim - Working with working children: Child labour and the barriers to education in rural northeastern Ghana (awarded 2001)
Hamish Raby - Ethnicity and identity in Zimbabwe (awarded 2001)
Antonio Serra - Legitimacy of local institutions for natural resource management in Manica, Mozambique (awarded 2001)
Phil Mulligan - Aboriginal property claims and globalisation in southeast Madagascar (awarded 2000)
Rudith King - The role of urban market trade in local development processes and its implication for policy: a case study of Kumasi Central Market, Ghana (awarded 1999)