Dr Lindsay Whitfield Awarded British Academy Research Grant

Lindsay`s project builds on her doctoral dissertation and on the Negotiating Aid research project that she is leading at the Global Economic Governance Programme. Her book aims to illustrate the extent to which official and private aid agencies and their practices (the aid system) are embedded in the State and society of Ghana, and to consider the political implications of this embeddedness for effective and democratic governance. The research project digs deep into one country`s experience in order to look at the aid system in a holistic way, following its tentacles into various government ministries, societal groups, policy issues, political processes and development outcomes. The project aims at thick description in order to describe how aid is negotiated and delivered; how official aid agencies intervene in, and are often the subject of, domestic policy debates; and how state and non-state actors respond to the now routine participation of aid agencies in Ghana`s decision-making and implementation processes. This method allows for disaggregating ‘recipient government` and ‘donor` in order to look at how different types of actors within the Government of Ghana, within the private sector and civil society, and within official and private aid agencies interact and form shifting alliances.

Dr Lindsay Whitfield is a Junior Research Fellow at the Global Economic Governance Programme, based jointly at University College and the Department of Politics and International Relations.