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MPhil prizes awarded to Cannelle Gueguen-Teil, Aisha Ahmad

Congratulations to Canelle Gueguen-Teil and Aisha Ahmad who have won the 2017 prizes for their performance in the MPhil in Development Studies.

Canelle Gueguen-Teil of Kellogg College won the Eugene Havas Memorial Prize for Best Overall Performance.

Aisha Ahmad of St Cross College won the Papiya Ghosh Thesis Prize.

Canelle's MPhil work focussed on analysing how refugees' and migrants' journeys to Europe shaped their decisions to go to Calais (and then to stay in France or go to the United Kingdom). She focussed on how violations of their human rights and respondents' conceptions of danger/hospitality within Europe influenced these decisions. To do so, she undertook fieldwork in the informal refugee camp known as the 'Jungle' in Calais over three months, carrying out interviews and participatory research.

She is currently working for the Stockholm Environment Institute in Bangkok as a research associate and hopes to further deepen her capacity for undertaking high-quality and impactful analysis and research.

Aisha's thesis focussed on urban planning and housing provision in Lahore, Pakistan, where she was specifically interested in the common and continued practice of converting arable peri-urban land into real estate for the construction of private housing schemes that serve as sites for speculative investment. On the whole, the thesis looked at the intersection of planning authorities, local bureaucracy and real estate actors and markets against the broader landscape of urban governance in Pakistan.

She has now started the DPhil in International Development at ODID, where she will continue research on similar themes of land, law and urban governance in Lahore.