Meet Our LSE ESRC DTP Postdoctoral Fellows

LSE DTP funds several ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowships each year. You can find out details of our current and past postdoctoral fellows and their research by clicking on the years below.

 

2025

 Sophie Legros - International DevelopmentSophie Legros

Project title: Changes, Continuities, and Gender Norms: Work and Care in Medellín’s Urban Peripheries

Bio: Sophie is an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Methodology, with a particular interest in gender norms change. She holds a PhD from the Department of International Development. She is also a Visiting Fellow at the Department of International Development and network member of the Gender Justice and Wellbeing Economy Programme at the International Inequalities Institute, LSE.

Summary of Project: Transforming the unjust gender norms that shape the division of paid and unpaid work in society is a key challenge in development policy and practice. This project investigates how gender norms evolve, why some resist change, and which methods effectively capture these dynamics. The research examines changes and continuities in the norms governing the household division of labour in Medellín, Colombia, where an increasing number of women have joined the labour force, yet continue to take on a disproportionate share of unpaid work at home. It addresses often-overlooked gender dimensions of the “Medellín Model”, shedding light on the role of violence in shaping care norms and practices and highlighting community care processes essential to human security and resilience. Methodologically, the study employs a nested mixed-methods approach, tracing the same variables across three levels of analysis, to enable a critical assessment of what different methods reveal about persistence and change. 

The ESRC fellowship aims to translate these findings into actionable recommendations for policymakers, development institutions, and civil society organisations. It will produce a portfolio of policy and guidance materials, including a policy brief and methodological tip sheet, that offer practical learnings for development programmes and for designing new indicators to capture the multifaceted nature of social norms change. Dissemination activities will mobilise various actors, including academics, researchers in development institutions, NGOs and activists.

Further information/how to contact:

Email address: s.c.legros@lse.ac.uk

 

Sophie Mylan - International DevelopmentSophie Mylan

Project Title: Epidemic emergencies: Re-thinking preparedness and response in humanitarian settings

Bio: Sophie has a combined clinical and academic career.  She is a fully qualified GP, whilst her research is situated at the intersection of medical anthropology, public health and humanitarianism.

Project: Epidemics are on the rise, and there is a greater emphasis amongst politicians, policy-makers, researchers, and those working in national and international health organisations, that we need to know how to better prepare and respond to these types of emergencies. There is much still unknown, however, about how to best prepare and respond to epidemics. Epidemic preparedness and response are especially important in settings that are associated with an increased risk of infectious disease outbreaks. Humanitarian settings, such as refugee camps and settlements, are a prime example. This fellowship builds on ethnographic research that was conducted for Sophie’s PhD that specifically explored epidemic preparedness in a refugee settlement in northern Uganda during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research demonstrated how historical, spiritual, socio-economic and political dynamics were inextricable from the way in which epidemic preparedness was conceptualised, delivered and responded to. It showed how current mainstream frameworks for preparedness ignore important perspectives from refugees that could usefully inform a re-thinking of preparedness, while also obfuscating the everyday suffering of refugees, and the (geo)political dynamics that perpetuate it. This fellowship will provide an opportunity to share the findings of this research, with the refugees and humanitarian and government staff who informed the research in Uganda, but also to important wider networks of researchers and policy-makers globally.

Further Information and How to Contact:

Email address: s.mylan@lse.ac.uk 

Sophie’s publications can be found at:  https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sophie-Mylan?ev=hdr_xprf 

 

Tomas Walker-Borsa - Media and Communications

Project title: Fiction, Friction, and the Phenomena of Fibre: Towards an Ethnography of Critical Digital Infrastructure

Bio: Tomas Walker-Borsa is a media ethnographer and documentary filmmaker with an interest in the material politics of internet infrastructures and the shifting ecologies of rural connectivity. He holds a Double BA in Political Studies and Psychology from the University of Saskatchewan, an MSc in Politics and Communication from LSE, and a DPhil from the Oxford Internet Institute. His doctoral dissertation, ‘Future Proof: the Meanings and Makings of The Fibre Project on Haida Gwaii’, received the Association of Internet Researchers’ (AoIR) 2025 Annual Dissertation Award. He is an adopted member of the Skidegate Gidins/Naa ‘Yuuwans Xaaydaga (Big House People) clan of the Haida Nation.

Summary of project: Across the globe, a vast network of fibre-optic cables forms the material substratum of the internet: from data centres to 5G networks, nearly all global internet traffic passes through this network of cables. Among the many forms such a network can take, the most coveted are ‘full fibre’ or Fibre-to-the-Premise (FTTP) networks, which offer unparalleled resiliency, latency, and capacity. Historically, the availability of such ‘future proof’ internet infrastructure was largely determined by geography, with urban areas enjoying far greater access than rural regions. In recent years, however, an ever-increasing share of rural and remote communities have turned the tide by successfully initiating their own state-of-the-art fibre networks.

Against this backdrop, this project will build on my doctoral research into the impacts and imaginaries associated with the successful deployment of a full-fibre network on the islands of Haida Gwaii, using a multi-modal ethnographic methodology to explore the ethnographic character of fibre in relation to the places in which it is physically located, the lives of those who use it, and the people who work to maintain it. Through a series of fieldwork excursions, the coordination of a multi-day convening with local partners on Haida Gwaii, and the development of a manuscript, this project will contribute to ongoing conversations around the politics of broadband ownership and the shifting realities of rural connectivity, and to critical and qualitative inquiries into the local legibilities of a globally emergent assemblage.  

Further Information and How to Contact:

Email address: t.borsa@lse.ac.uk

 

Neil Warner - European Institute

Project Title: Towards “no alternative”: the rejection of proposals for the socialisation of investment in Western Europe, and the paths not taken before neoliberalism

Bio: Neil Warner is a political economist and historical sociologist with interests in labour movements, socialist and social democratic parties, the politics of the ‘long 1970s, and alternatives to capitalist control over workplaces and investment.

Summary of Project: Neil’s project casts a new light on the economic crises of the 1970s and early 1980s. These are widely seen as an international moment of transition to neoliberal policy regimes, which sought to accommodate the interests of capital in response to these crises. However, as Neil’s work emphasises, an alternative set of responses instead advocated the ‘socialisation of investment’, by expanding control over investment by the state and/or by workers. Through a comparative study of defeated socialisation proposals in the United Kingdom, France, and Sweden, Neil argues that these measures were defeated due to their weak resonance with the experiences of most workers and left politicians, in combination with their strong resonance with capital owners who mobilised against them. The defeat of these projects left governments increasingly dependent on new measures to accommodate privately-controlled capital in order to promote investment, supporting a sense that there was ‘no alternative’ to neoliberalism. 

Further Information and How to Contact:

Email address: n.warner@lse.ac.uk 

2024

 Antony Miro Born - Department of Methodology Born_Anthony_Miro_4-zu-drei_jpg

Project Title: Social Ladders and the City: Rescripting social mobility in marginalised neighbourhoods

Bio: Anthony Miro Born is a sociologist and geographer with a particular interest in social inequality. He holds a PhD from the Department of Sociology, London School of Economics and Political Science. Before joining LSE, Miro has taught and worked at Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Potsdam, and Technical University of Berlin. He is currently also affiliated with the Department of Sociology at Goethe University Frankfurt and the Collaborative Research Centre 1265 at Technical University of Berlin.

Summary of Project: Promoting social mobility in marginalised urban communities has become a powerful normative concern in public, political and academic debates. Miro’s doctoral research places the ideal of social mobility itself at the centre of the analysis. Featuring the perspectives of upwardly mobile individuals, family members and long-term residents from stigmatised neighbourhoods, his research explores the contradictions between the lofty promises of social mobility in marginalised areas, its ambivalent politics and its complex manifestations in people’s lived experiences. The ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship will provide Miro with the opportunity to further disseminate these findings. During his ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship, Miro will prepare a book manuscript (under contract with Oxford University Press) and a research-based comic book (in collaboration with Irem Kurt).

Further Information and How to Contact:

Email address: a.m.born@lse.ac.uk 

Department Profile: https://www.lse.ac.uk/Methodology/People/Academic-Staff/Miro-Born/Miro-Born 

Personal Website: www.anthonymiroborn.com

 

Sacha Hilhorst - Department of Sociology

Sacha Hilhorst

Project Title: Political disempowerment and economic dispossession in ex-industrial England

Bio: Sacha Hilhorst is a political ethnographer with an interest in the shifting politics of England's post-industrial towns. 

Summary of Project: Sacha's project examines the state of political legitimacy in England’s post-industrial towns. Quantitative literatures suggest former mining and manufacturing towns now register high levels of political mistrust and disengagement – patterns which cannot be explained through economics or demographics alone. On the basis of a political ethnography of the towns of Corby and Mansfield, she argues that it has become common for residents of both towns to understand politics primarily through the frame of corruption. The corruption frame derives part of its salience, she finds, from local histories and legacies of deindustrialisation. She interrogates the beliefs and dispositions underlying this vernacular political ontology and its implications for our political system.

Further Information and How to Contact:

Email Address: s.hilhorst@lse.ac.uk

Department Page: https://www2.lse.ac.uk/sociology/people/academic-staff/sacha-hilhorst

 

Liz Mann - Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (associated with the Department of Social Policy)

Project Title: Wealth matters: exploring the intrahousehold allocation of wealth and the gender wealth gap in the UK

Bio: Liz is ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE) at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Her research interests centre on wealth and wealth inequality in the UK from a policy perspective. She is particularly interested in the gendered allocation of wealth, and how wealth is managed within the household. Her thesis, ‘Wealth Matters: a UK policy perspective’ completed in the Department of Social Policy also at the LSE, and supported by the Leverhulme Trust, took a multi-method approach to consider these issues. Liz also has an active interest in the taxation of wealth, and attitudes to inequality in the UK. Liz was a contributing author for the Wealth Tax Commission, and participates in the ‘Wealth, elites and tax justice’ research stream at the International Inequalities Institute

Summary of Project: Liz's research explores the organisation of assets and debts between couples who live together and considers the scale of the gender wealth gap in the UK. She demonstrates that household level analysis obscures gender inequalities in wealth. She is further offering evidence of both the gender wealth gap at the national level, and within households. In her qualitative work she gives narrative to the wealth sharing journey, which typically happens progressively over the course of a relationship, but crucially, not in uniform ways. She demonstrates that an income-based perspective offers only limited insight into the complicated ways in which assets and debts are shared or allocated within couples. She further offers new insights into the social meaning placed upon the organisation of wealth within the household. This is a vital development to the small but growing body of literature on the intrahousehold allocation of resources and the gender wealth gap.  In so doing she challenge assumptions of equal sharing within the household or indeed within couples.

This research has relevance for academics, campaigners, and policy makers, with cross-cutting implications for numerous fields of research, including social policy, sociology, economics, and law. The policy implications are similarly widespread, including, the design of means tested benefit assessment, tax reliefs and incentives, and legal developments, most notably the stalled Cohabitation Rights Bill, and the financial settlements of divorcing couples. The overarching aim of her fellowship is to consolidate and disseminate findings from her doctoral research.

Further Information and How to Contact:

Email Address: e.c.mann@lse.ac.uk

Department Page: https://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/_new/people/person.asp?id=10477

 

Silvia Pergetti - Department of Anthropology 

Project Title: Repair for sustainability and energy transitions

Bio: Silvia is a social anthropologist with 15 years of professional experience working on questions of energy and development. She is a graduate of the LSE and holds a PhD from the University of Edinburgh.

Summary of Project: Silvia's research seeks to reshape urgent debates on sustainability and energy transitions by calling attention to the work of maintaining and repairing energy systems. Her doctoral research project documented the centrality of this work to the long-term sustainability of solar energy projects in the Sundarbans region of India – as well as the consequences of its structural devaluation. Her programme for the fellowship aims to amplify this message by disseminating research findings and developing impact opportunities at scale, while looking beyond the timeframe of the fellowship to ensure its long-term legacy.

This aim will be achieved through four interlinked objectives:

  1. Produce a book manuscript to be submitted for publication
  2. Communicate research findings to colleagues, students, and the general public
  3. Undertake a follow-on trip to the Sundarbans to finetune and enrich the book content
  4. Formulate a grant proposal to extend her work into the future

Further Information and How to Contact:

Email Address: s.pergetti@lse.ac.uk

Department Page: https://www.lse.ac.uk/anthropology/people/silvia-pergetti/Dr-Silvia-Pergetti

 

2023

Maria Eleni Anastasopoulou - European Institute

Project Title: Coming to Terms with Forced Migration

 

Anna Bridel - Department of Geography and Environment

Project Title: Justice in a Changing Climate? Collaboration and Inclusion in Environmental Risk Expertise

 

Fabian Broeker - Department of Media and Communications

Project Title: Mobile lovers: Affordances, spaces, and narrativisation among dating app users in Berlin

 

Tehreem Husain - Department of Economic History

Project Ttle: Railways and Underwriters 1880-1913

 

Baljit Kaur - Department of Sociology

Project Title: Mapping ‘the Streets’: Young Female Rappers and Violence in East London

 

Anishka Lohiya - Department of Anthropology

Project Title: Seva as practice; Krishna worship in the Pushtimarg

 

 Zsofia Szlamka - Department of Health Policy

Project Title: Can mental health work across borders? The crosscultural aspects of mental health interventions

 

2022

Sanda Caracentev - Department of Anthropology

Project Title: Parcel-sending as a peri-pandemic and postcrisis strategy of creating mutable connections in Moldovan transnational life

 

Carolin Dieterle - Department of International Development

Project Title: Who has control over land and why it matters: Land investments, land tenure and global governance in sub-Saharan Africa

 

Maia Holtermann Entwistle - Department of International Relations

Project Title: Art, Race, and Capitalism in the Postcolonial Arab Gulf States

 

Youngcho Lee - Department of Social Policy

Project Title: Fathers’ Uptake of Parental leave in South Korea and Beyond: Determinants and Aftermaths

 

Ziang Liu - Department of Accounting

Project Title: Quantification and Fiscal Governance in China, 1400-1800

 

Ewa Majczak - Department of Media and Communications

Project Title: Stich the dress and the web: young women, fashion and digital economies in Yaoundé, Cameroon

 

Alka Raman - Department of Economic History

Project Title: From Muse to Machines: Indian Cotton Textiles and British Industrialisation

2021

Stuart Gordon Bramwell - Department of Methodology

Project Title: Ethnic identities and parties in Sub-Saharan Africa: A minister-level data project, 1966 to 2016

 

Clayton Goodgame - Department of Anthropology

Project Title: Selling holy land: Palestinian Christian activism in the Old City of Jerusalem

 

Caroline Green - Department of International Relations

Project Title: Colonialism, Decolonisation and Women’s Liberation: The Geopolitics of Britain’s Engagement in the UN Women’s Rights Agenda 1950 - 1995

 

Kyriaki (Kira) Gartzou Katsouyanni - European Institute

Project Title: Cooperation against the odds: A study on the political economy of local development in a country with small firms and small farms

 

Shereen Fernandez - Department of Sociology

Project Title: Following the paper trails: An examination into the impacts of the Prevent Duty on schools and Muslim communities in London

 

Vanessa Hughes - Department of Social Policy

Project Title: Precarious lives: Young migrants, citizenship and activism across Europe

 

Martina Manara - Department of Geography & Environment

Project Title: Land tenure formalisation as institutional transition in African cities: a critical examination.

 

Claire Moll Namas - Department of Anthropology

Project Title: Navigating transnational confianza: Relocating agency in Salvadoran migration

 

Sharmila Parmanand - Department of Gender Institute

Project Title: Saving Our Sisters: The Politics of Anti-Trafficking and Prostitution in the Philippines

2020

Miranda Bevan - Department of Social Policy

Project title: Children and Young People in Police Custody: Building understanding and motivating change through children’s perspectives

 

Katherine Dawson - Department of Geography & Environment

Project title: Shifting Sands: Unearthing cities of sand in West Africa

 

Ivan Deschenaux - Department of Methodology

Project title:Beyond participant observation: integrating ethnographic and quantitative research methods

 

Aiko Holvikivi - Department of Gender Studies

Project title: Fixing Gender: The Paradoxical Politics of Peacekeeper Training

 

Maria Kramer - Department of Sociology

Project title: Making Healthy Families: The Biomedicalization of Kin Marriage in Contemporary Turkey

 

Hjalte Christian Lokdam - European Institute

Project title: Democracy and independent power in central banks and beyond

 

Rishita Nandagiri - Department of Methodology

Project title: Asha: Co-producing abortion knowledge & impact outputs with lay community health intermediaries in India

 

Giulio Ongaro - Department of Gender Studies Anthropology

Project title: The value and efficacy of Akha shamanic medicine: exporting anthropological insights

 

Mislav Radic - Department of Management

Project title: Rethinking Privatisation: Exploring the Potential of Hybrid Governance Models

 

Teodor Zidaru-Bărbulescu - Department of Anthropology

Project title: Phantom trust: Faith, language, and digital inequalities in Southwest Kenya

2019

Jesus Gabriel Gutierrez Cofre - Department of Social Policy

Project Title: From parental preferences to geography of opportunities: Analysis of the factors shaping socioeconomic and academic school composition

 

Andrei Guter-Sandu - Department of Accounting

Project Title: Leveraging Social Value: Multiple Valuation Logics in the Field of Social Finance

 

Tahani Mustafa - Department of International Relations

Project Title: Security Sector Reform and the Disfiguration of Local Security Landscapes: The Case of the Occupied Palestinian Territories

 

Meredith Whitten - Department of Geography & Environment

Project Title: Critical scaffolding or cosmetic afterthought? Examining green space’s role in the 21st-century city

 

Laura Brown - Department of International Development

Project Title: Environmental inequities and maternal health andbehaviour: Building bridges from UK-basedresearch to research in low- and middle-income countries

 

Krisztián Pósch - Department of Methodology

Project Title: Using advanced data analytics to assess the spatialcausal effects of policing policies and practices

 

Fuad Mustafa - Department of Anthropology

Project Title: Security Sector Reform and the Disfiguration of Local Security Landscapes: The Case of the Occupied Palestinian Territories

2018

Dvora Liberman - Department of Law

Project Title: Crown Court clerks and women offenders: Examining and disseminating marginalized perspectives on the criminal justice system through oral history

 

Laura Bainbridge - Department of Social Policy

Project Title: Borrowing crime control policy from the USA: ‘compulsory sobriety’ and the rise of ‘alcohol tags’

 

Marina Cino Pagliarello - Department of European Institute

Project Title: The power of ideas in shaping European education policy: winners and losers of the ‘Europe of Knowledge’ agenda

 

Polly Withers - Department of Media & Communications

Project Title: Liminal Politics: Nation, Gender, and Leisure in the “alternative” Palestinian Music Scene

 

Rebecca Simpson - Department of Economic History

Project Title: Education, public employment and social mobility in postcolonial Africa

 

Edward Pertwee - Department of Sociology

Project Title: The Contemporary Euro-American Far Right and the New White Nationalism

 

Florian Weigand - Department of International Development

Project Title: Legitimacy and armed conflict – characteristics, sources, trends