New Research Professor to join Development studies
We are proud to announce that Professor Naomi Hossain will join SOAS as a Research Professor in Development studies.
Naomi Hossain will join SOAS from the Accountability Research Center at American University and from the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. She will join the Department of Development studies from September 2023.
On her appointment, Professor Naomi Hossain said:
“I am delighted to be joining SOAS’s dynamic Department of Development Studies and to be working with scholars on the cutting edge of debates about development at a time of climate, economic, and political crisis.
At SOAS I plan to build collaborative and interdisciplinary research programmes that centre perspectives from the global South, and which are both scholarly and applied to the real-world problems we collectively face.
I am particularly interested in supervising doctoral theses about Bangladesh and the contentious politics of accountability, and in convening scholars and artists interested in Bangladesh and its place in the world.”
Zoe Marriage, Head of Development studies said:
"Naomi Hossain is a powerful scholar in development studies, and her approach and specialisms complement the work in the department and the School. We are very much looking forward to engaging with her research and welcoming her to SOAS."
Naomi researches the politics of development, focusing on how people living with poverty and precarity get the public services they need. She is passionately interested in Bangladesh but has also led large collaborative projects spanning another 20 countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe.
Her work increasingly focuses on accountability for ‘natural’ and industrial disasters, food and fuel crises, and the role of protest in holding public authorities to account. Books include The Aid Lab: Understanding Bangladesh’s Unexpected Success and co-edited volumes The Politics of Education in Developing Countries and Food Riots, Food Rights and the Politics of Provisions. She is currently working on a book about the moral economy of the global crowd in this contentious 21st century.
