LSE Africa Dissertation Prize

Applications and previous winners

Every year the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa hosts the Master’s Dissertation on Africa Prize for LSE students.

Old Building LSE

Aimed at encouraging and celebrating LSE's outstanding fieldwork and research on Africa, the FLIA Master's Dissertation on Africa Prize recognises the year's most innovative and significant dissertations that further our understanding of the continent.

The nominations from departments are now opened for the 2025 Dissertation prize!

Prize winner 2022/2023

The Institute is pleased to announce the winners of the Master's Dissertation on Africa Prize for 2022/23. The panel of LSE academics selected a student for producing outstanding work on Africa. Based in the Department of International History the winner will receive £500 and are invited to adapt their dissertation for the Africa at LSE blog

  • Alysha Robinson, Department of International History, for her research: “From the Ogu to U.P.E.: The Economic
    Underpinnings of Igbo Women’s Protest, c. 1929-1958.”

Prize winners 2021/2022

The Institute is pleased to announce the winners of the Master's Dissertation on Africa Prize for 2021/22. A panel of LSE academics selected two winners for producing outstanding work on Africa. Based in the departments of International Development and Geography and Environment both winners will receive £500 and are invited to adapt their dissertation for the Africa at LSE blog

  • Fraser Curry, from the department of Geography and Environment for his outstanding thesis, On the land of others: Gardiens and entanglement in a changing Dakar.
  • Nora Geiszl from the International Development department for an exceptional dissertation entitled, An Empirical Study of the Impact of Kenya’s Free Secondary Education Policy on Women’s Education. 

Prize winners 2020/2021

  • Aaron Atimpe: The Long-term Impacts of State Institutions on Norms of Tax Compliance: Evidence from the Asante Kingdom in Ghana
  • Anna Williams: Symbolic Satisfaction of International Norms: Aid-based Incentive Structures and Reducing Gender Equality Change in Post-Conflict Societies
  • Ramzi Darouich: Sovereign Default and Military Power: The Case of Egypt
  • Imogen Fairbairn: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Museum and Media Texts on the: Issue of Restitution in the UK
  • Runner-up award: Vivekah Deerpaul: Squatters, SmartCities and Resorts: Neoliberal Spatial Reconfigurations in Mauritius

Prize winners 2019/2020

We are delighted to announce the following students as winners of our annual dissertation competition for 2019/20. 

FLIA Special Prize - awarded for contributions to decolonising the curriculum: 

  • Kristophina Shilongo - Design and Decoloniality: Clout or Cloud? - A Critical Discourse Analysis of Indigenous Knowledge Technology projects

Innovative Research Techniques award

  • Simon Marcus - The intersectionality of COVID-19: A Quantitative analysis of COVID-19 in a South African urban settlement

Outstanding Dissertation award

  • Naoki Fujioka - Manufacturing or Services – Which Sector’s Employment Growth Benefits the Poor More? Evidence from Rwanda.
  • Isabel Paolini - Rights for the Rightless: Synthesizing an Interdisciplinary Framework Explaining Accession to the Statelessness Conventions.

Prize winners 2018/2019

We are delighted to announce the following students as winners of our annual dissertation competition for 2018/19:

  • Allison Corkery - Confronting inequality in South Africa through rights-based activism
  • Keeyaa Chaurey - Pirates and property: the moralities of branded and generic medicines
  • Stephanie Cantor - Designing meaningful employment for Kenyan youth
  • Adil Sait - Local economic development and livelihoods in urbanisation
  • Tim Hall - The lives of migrant women factory workers in industrialising Ethiopia
  • Chitra Sangtani - ‘Sustainable’ futures and state-instigated ruin in Cairo