The DevGRG offers an annual prize for the most promising dissertation concerning ‘Development Geographies’. The prize is non-monetary, but students will have the opportunity to develop their dissertation into a 1,000-word blog post which we will publish on our website.
The prize is open to any student taking a first degree in geography. Students taking joint degrees are eligible to enter for the prize, provided that at least half their course is in geography. It is suggested that no Department of Geography submits more than one dissertation for this prize. Dissertations will be evaluated by three members of the DevGRG Committee.
To enter, please fill in the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) and RGS-IBG Research Groups Undergraduate Dissertation Prizes Submission Form 2025 by 15th July 2025 and refer to the details and guidance on the form.
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Congratulations to our 2024 Undergraduate Dissertation Prize Winners: Jule Shad, University of Southampton & Nicolas Mouros, University of Bristol! Once again, the submission standard for this year’s entries was very high – well done to all entrants for doing such impressive work.
Jule Shad, University of Southampton. Dissertation title: “National development at a human cost: examining the treatment of Nepalese migrant workers in Qatar in preparation for the 2022 FIFA world cup”.
National development at a human cost is an excellent piece of work that investigates South-South migration as a question of development. It takes a rights-based approach to the experience of Nepalese migrant workers in the leadup to the 2022 World Football Cup in Qatar, which complements existing policy and finance focusses on South-South migration. The research is commendable in its effort to seek out voices of (families of) Nepalese migrant workers who have been affected by or engaged in migrant labour in Qatar. The findings are highly relevant for the discipline of Development Geographies, and revert the dominant gaze that tends to focus on South-North migration.
Nicolas Mouros, University of Bristol. Dissertation title: “Decommonisation of water in divided Cyprus”.
Decommonisation of water in divided Cyprus is a highly original dissertation that challenges the neoliberal, depoliticised view of water shortage as a physical phenomenon, and instead locates it within development-as-growth processes of appropriation, extraction and privatisation in divided Cyprus. The research is grounded in a sophisticated analytical framework that coalesces relevant concepts and theoretical approaches to hydraulic patronage, commoning and environmental peacebuilding. The dissertation used highly innovative methods, combining creative, map-making and participatory approaches. Their analysis produced interesting insights for water governance and peacebuilding in Cyprus, grounded in the explicitly acknowledged normative aspect and transformational goal of the research.
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A Blog Post by Nicolas Mouros, University of Bristol: A DevGRG Undergraduate Dissertation Prize Winner (2024)
How did you come up with the topic?
The theme of my dissertation was inspired by a conversation with my friend Vijdan 3 years ago. We were driving to Kayalar/Όργα in Cyprus for our annual swim and ekmek kadayifi. Vijdan told me to look outside the window. She said, “all this water in this dam here – is all from Turkey”. I was shocked.
The conversation was a turning point, as it made me think why I had never considered water’s role in the militarisation and division of my island. Over the past decades, across the divide of Cyprus, a growing movement has emerged that places environmental justice and reunification as an interconnected struggle. I saw a gap in my understanding which also extends to environmental groups and the reunification community as well. There has been minimal engagement with the political economy and historical context of water on the island, beyond climate change narratives. As a result, this dissertation project became a collective mission for me to attempt to understand the connections between the division of Cyprus and the political ecology of water management through the lens of the commons. This project felt meaningful and important because the current status-quo of water management is defined by colonial struggles, ecological degradation and neoliberalism. I wanted to write a dissertation that is reflexive and disruptive of this reality.
Which scholars or activists influenced you?
My dissertation was influenced by different viewpoints from the political ecology of water and the commons. Maria Kaika and Erik Swyngedouw’s work on neoliberalism, state building, and water management was foundational to my writing. It made it clear to me that water is not scarce by nature, but becomes scarce through the market and extractivist water practices. Moreover, the book ‘Divided Environments’ by Clemens Hoffman, Jan Selby and Gabrielle Daoust was inspirational as it applied a political ecology lens to Cyprus’ waters. The authors politicised different water infrastructure with a critic to water scarcity and mainstream climate change narratives. Their analysis helped shape my own understanding of these issues. At the same time, growing up in Cyprus allowed me to engage with their work critically, as someone with lived experience of the island’s division. I found that scholars that research Cyprus – but only spent a limited amount of time there – don’t appreciate the everyday embodied struggles of reunification and the epistemologies that come with them.
From the world of the commons, I incorporated the ‘decommonisation’ argument by Nayak Pratteep, which places the commons as dynamic processes rather than a fixed point. I approached this body of work with an experimental approach – where I applied it to commoning of divided water – a commons that is not necessarily tangible.
Astrida Neimani’s transformative-feminist body of work ‘Hydro Commons’ was influential. It let me reimagine water bodies beyond their neutral and technocratic capitalist abstraction. It raised the importance of embodying water and placing the lived experience of water struggle and emancipation as a centre to the analysis.
Finally, my research was influenced by the local activists, artists, and architects I had the honour to interview. Our conversations, disagreements and drawings shaped this dissertation. Their subjectivities, lived experiences, and activism enabled reimagination of water in Cyprus, but also a realisation of how the current partitionist and neoliberal water governance is eroding water commons.
Any challenges you faced as a researcher?
I would say the biggest challenge I faced in my research project is the University of Bristol’s austerity-driven approach to education. The department of Geographical Sciences has amazing and dedicated academics, but it is also understaffed. As an undergraduate student, I saw the effects of this. Staff were overworked and unable to give each student the time and support their dissertation deserved in my opinion. This was not a matter of unwillingness on their behalf but an institutional problem, which left me feeling isolated at times, especially when I was excited to explore my research interests deeper.
Any tips for other undergraduate students embarking on a dissertation project?
Honestly, I would say the biggest tip is to calm down. There is so much stress about choosing a dissertation topic that is academically relevant and interesting. We live in an era defined by struggle and injustice but also empowerment and transformation. Human geography needs more research projects that are personal, subjective, maybe messy, but most importantly meaningful.
We are exposed to so much critical theory, and while that is important, I think the right step is to connect it with themes that speak to us and our experiences. One quote I read in a social ecology book, and I deeply resonate with is that “research is not about the interpretation of the world, but the organisation of social transformation”. Some aspects of human geography have the temptation to produce clever interpretations of space as the end goal of research. We are not studying just to be smart, but to do something meaningful with what we learn.
Has the dissertation as a project been transformative for you?
Absolutely! The dissertation opened new doors to me. The political ecology literature has transformed my perspectives of environmental change beyond notions of environmental liberalism. I was able to reimagine water bodies and reformulate them as commons that oppose the militarisation and division of Cyprus. This was a very meaningful outcome for me as I was able to share my research results with the local community of activists in Cyprus and initiate a deeper discussion on this topic.
In my dissertation I used participatory sketching as a research method with the activists involved in the project. This highlighted to me the power of the visual to spark reimagination and shape how we understand geography. Since September, I’ve been pursuing a master’s in Multidisciplinary Printmaking, where I have been exploring the themes of my dissertation: water scarcity, commons and divided environments through printmaking.
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Previous Prize Winners:
- 1995: Ming-Lee Lim (Oxford) ‘Kotadesasi Zones: A New Hypothesis on Megalopisation in Asia: A Case Study of Beijing, China’
- 1996: Rachel Jenkings (University of the West of England) ‘What role does female participation play in the effectiveness of community development? A Case study of the Christian Community Services Department in the Machakos Diocese of the Church of the Province of Kenya’
- 1997: Rebecca Dell (Birmingham) ‘Visions of Africa: Pictoral Images in Oxfam Publications’
- 1998: Haleh Darwazeh (UCL) ‘Micro-Credit Enterprises and Women’s Empowerment’
- 1999: Simon Hayden (Oxford) ‘Fair Trade Coffee as a Strategy for Human Development in Rural Peru’
- 2000: Alice Pettigrew (Durham) ‘Shaka to Shakespeare: An Examination of the Relationship between Education and Identity in Twentieth Century KwaZulu-Natal’.
- 2001: Samantha Shepherd (UWE) ‘The Attitudes of Indigenous People to Their Environment: A Study of the Bajau Community in Tukangbesi Archipelago, Indonesia’.
- 2002: Emilie Filou (Oxford) ‘Camels, Marabouts and Docs: Health Care Provision for Tuaregs in Northern Niger’.
- 2003: Sarah Rothmell (Birmingham) ‘The Connectivitea of Britain and Sri Lanka’.
- 2004: Edward Poulter (Edinburgh) ‘Challenging the Epidemiological Transition: An Investigation into the Influence of Urban Slum Environments on health with Kibera Slum, Nairobi’.
- 2005: Harriet White (Edinburgh) ‘Governance and performance: A case study of identity construction among two Karen groups’. [List of shortlisted dissertations]
- 2006: Siobhan Luikham (UCL) ‘Why don’t the kids go to school? A comparative study of the constraints on achievement of free compulsory universal basic education (fCUBE) in Ghana from a household perspective’. [List of shortlisted dissertations]
- 2007: Ruth Pearse (The University of Edinburgh) ‘The gender politics of credit control: Social appropriation of the mobile phone in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania’
- 2008: David Parry (Queen Mary UoL) ‘Motivation as assemblage: sustainable agriculture in rural Mexico’.
- 2009: Richard Mallett (UCL) ”It’s like one leg is in the village, one leg is here’: Transition, Connection and (Uncertain?) Aspirations among Urban Internally Displaced Persons in Kampala, Uganda
- 2010: Thomas Grant (Exeter) ‘Making way for Arecelor Mittal’.
- 2011: James Mak (LSE) ‘Spaces in the (Re-) construction of Post-conflict Cambodia.’
- 2013: Sally Millett (Durham) ‘Representing and Encountering Tanzania: Locating Agency in the Discursive Formation of Nature and Poverty in Western ‘Voluntourism’ Narratives’
- 2014: Christopher Blois-Brooke (Durham) ‘Postcolonial destabilisation of expert knowledge through Theatre for Development? A spatial analysis in (and away from) Lusaka, Zambia.’
- 2015: Matita Afoakwa (UCL) ‘Self, Status and Survival: The experience of return migration of professionals to Accra, Ghana’.”
- 2016: Daphne Lee (UCL) ‘Ageing environmental relationships in Singapore.’
- 2017: Clara Ida Bartram Gurresø (Edinburgh) ‘Why do People Volunteer? A Critical Study into the Motivations of International Volunteers.’
- 2018: Miles Harrison (UCL) ‘Empowering the poor?’ The effects of formalising informal settlements in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.’
- 2019: Lucy Petty (Newcastle) ‘Responsible Volunteering: A Viable Solution? A Postcolonial Reading of International Volunteering in Jambiani, Zanzibar.’
- 2020: Rai Saad Khan (Oxford) ‘Lahore’s Performative Statehoods: a study of the form and practices of statehood of the Walled City of Lahore Authority in Pakistan’
- 2022: Sam Street (UCL) ‘Navigating the maelstrom: The conjunctural geographies of Nigerian online freelancers’
The information provided will be treated in the strictest confidence. Relevant data, including name, contact details, topic and affiliation, will be processed under legitimate interest for the purposes of this dissertation prize only. Names and affiliations of prize winners will be made public on our website and will be kept on record as part of the Society’s historical archive. More information on our privacy policy can be found on our website.
