About the Award
First given in 2001, the Slawson Awards are supported by Society Fellows Paul and Mary Slawson. The awards support geographical fieldwork involving development issues with a high social and economic value.
Applicants must be Fellows, Postgraduate Fellows or ordinary members of the Society.
Deadline: 22 February
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Please read the guidelines and send your completed application by email to grants@rgs.org.
Download application guidelines
2018 recipients
Penelope Quinton (King's College London). ‘Health perceptions of Palestinian women affected by the Israeli State house demolitions and land seizures in the West Bank’
This study examines the impact of Israeli house demolitions and land seizure in the West Bank on Palestinian women's self-perceived health and capability to lead lives they value. Ethnographic fieldwork will be undertaken in three villages in the West Bank over a period of nine months to gain an understanding of how wellbeing is conceived within a broader socio-political environment, exploring narratives linking well-being, social environment and political context when faced with the threat of loss of home.
Charlotte Ramble (London School of Economics and Political Science). ‘Beyond the Walls: Incarceration, caste, class and gender in Nepal’s western hills’
Twelve years after the end of the Maoist insurgency that called for an end to caste- and ethnicity-based discrimination in Nepal, historical inequality has persisted alongside radical social change. This contextualised study of a Nepalese prison aims to explore the operations of power at a time marked by massive transformation, focusing on the relationship between imprisonment and social and ethnic inequalities. Fieldwork will be undertaken both in prisons and with the families and communities affected by incarceration over the course of a year in Narayan, a town in the Dailekh District of western-central Nepal. Questions of inequality and structural discimination will be explored through participant observation and semi-structured interviews.
Martina Manara (London School of Economics and Political Science). ‘Essays on the ordinary land economy of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’
Following its land reform, which replaced customary with statutory tenure in urban areas, for twelve years the Tanzanian government has been operating a programme of land tenure regularisation in Dar es Salaam’s most consolidated informal settlements, offering residential licences to around 220,000 households. Given the low uptake rate of these licences, this project investigates the complex informal institutions of landmarkets and land-use. The research will examine how systems of cultural evaluation and social norms regulating the ordinary informal land economy mediate individual and collective uptake of residential licences, shaping the evolution of informal institutions into hybridized or formal institutions.
Previous recipients
Slawson Award recipients 2001-2017 (PDF)