On 2 April 2026, Ahmed El Assal and Ilaha Abasli, PhD researchers at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) won the best article award during the Erasmus Graduate School of Social Sciences and Humanities (EGSH) PhD Excellence Awards.
The pair were nominated for their article 'Why are you not doing research in your home country? Dissecting expectations of southern researchers' which they co-authored with Yasmine Hafez (School of African and Oriental Studies).
In the article, they reflect on their fieldwork experience as Global South researchers doing research outside their home countries.
The authors emphasize the need to decolonize knowledge and (re)evaluate research ethics and training; they advocate for re-considering knowledge creation and power shifting as a process rather than the outcome and fieldwork as an essential knowledge creation component enabling post-knowledge production and doing research differently.
The article was published in Development in Practice in 2025 - 'Why are you not doing research in your home country? Dissecting expectations of southern researchers'.
- PhD student
- PhD student