Congratulations to the Architectural Association’s Ferial Massoud, the University of Cambridge’s Katharina Egle and the LSE-CU’s Leila Hammouche for their prize-winning dissertations!
This year’s submissions covered a range of topics and disciplines from students across the UK. After close consideration, the Selection Committee awards first prize to Massoud’s dissertation, ‘Desert Anxieties. The Algerian Sahara: Emptiness by Design'. A joint second prize is awarded to Egle’s dissertation on ‘Remembering the Algerian War in France: The Role of Interest Groups in Framing Ontological (In)security’ and Hammouche’s dissertation ‘Negotiating Aid: Technical Assistance in Ghana and Algeria between Neutralism, Bloc Politics and African Unity, 1957-1966’.
Selection Committee comments:
Ferial Massoud’s dissertation has a unique feel and is visual and poetic in design. It presents a highly original exploration of space and the desert in the colonial imagination and geographical projects to flood the Algerian Sahara - and how this contributed to future violence and destruction. The findings bring together the importance and implications of how the colonial narrative sets up the land for destruction and the "material, visible, destructive reality" of colonial occupation.
The dissertation by Katharina Egle makes important contributions to understanding how history and memory evolve, and how state identities transform through the role of NSA and interest groups, leading to the recognition of colonial crimes and compensation. It rigorously engages with IR theory in its analysis of the treatment of Algerians who had fought for France in the Algerian Independence War and the massacre of Paris 1961.
Leila Hammouche’s fascinating dissertation builds upon the present directions in historiography to give new insights on South-South cooperation. Its discussion of technical assistance post-independence across Africa and neocolonialism draws on archives and first-hand media sources and in this way, has brought many of these documents into the public domain for the first time.
Ferial Massoud | (1st) 'Desert Anxieties. The Algerian Sahara: Emptiness by Design'
Ferial received her MArch from the Architectural Association with honours. Currently interested in the colonial relationship between France and Algeria, Ferial is concerned with the ground and its representations as a record of this dynamic.
Katharina Egle | (2nd) 'Remembering the Algerian War in France: The Role of Interest Groups in Framing Ontological (In)security'
Katharina has MPhil in Politics and International Studies from University of Cambridhge. She is currently working on development projects in francophone Africa at the German development agency in Frankfurt. she hopes to pursue a PhD focusing on collective memory, colonial crimes and ontological security.
Leila Hammouche | (2nd) 'Negotiating Aid: Technical Assistance in Ghana and Algeria between Neutralism, Bloc Politics and African Unity, 1957-1966'
Leila has an MA/MSc in International and World History from the LSE-Columbia University double degree program, with research interests including the Cold War in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. She’s worked in media at ARTE and plans to continue researching south-south cooperation in academia while exploring opportunities in international relations.
Launched by the Society for Algerian Studies and the LSE Middle East Centre, this prize is aimed at Master’s students in the UK conducting research on Algeria. It is designed to encourage and celebrate outstanding research focussed on Algeria.
For all enquiries, please contact Kendall Livingston, Projects and Research Development Manager: k.livingston@lse.ac.uk