Ms Virginia Horscroft
Nationality: Australia
Year: 2005
Subject Area: Social Sciences
The Wingate Foundation supported my fieldwork for my doctoral research into the interface between local trade policy practices and global trade negotiations in a small island developing state (SIDS) – Fiji. With it, I was able to carry out ethnographic research within Fiji’s trade bureaucracy, and to relate it to the work of their negotiators, particularly in Brussels and Geneva. My research demonstrated the critical importance of understanding trade policy from the viewpoint of policy makers and negotiators. Their work is not a simple reflection of the demands of local and foreign business interests, as well as foreign states in the negotiating room. Rather, these pressures are refracted through the interpretive world of policy makers, and thereby altered.
Following the submission of my thesis, I will continue to work on trade policy and development issues among SIDS in the Pacific Region, in a research and advisory capacity.