Doctor Kate Meagher
Nationality: Canada
Year: 2001
Subject Area: Social Sciences
I received a Wingate Scholarship to fund the second round of my doctoral fieldwork in Nigeria, which focused on the role of social networks in informal economic organization in two small-scale manufacturing clusters. The scholarship enabled me to carry out a survey of informal manufacturers, and to conduct network mapping and life histories with a smaller sub-sample of producers. Largely on the strength of the fieldwork, the thesis won an Audrey Richard's Prize for the best doctoral thesis in African Studies, published by James Currey and Indiana University Press. Since completing my doctorate, I have received a Wenner Gren research grant to carry out additional research in another part of Nigeria, and am currently writing up the findings under the auspices of a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at the African Studies Centre, University of Oxford.