PhD fellowship: the importance of networking and applying local knowledge

Earlier this year, I spent three months in Helsinki, Finland, as a visiting PhD fellow at the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER). Thankfully, my application to the spring fellowship (April to June) was accepted: temperatures were quite low when I arrived (3°C in the day!), and I can only imagine how much colder the Finnish winters are.

The UNU-WIDER PhD Fellowship provides PhD students with an opportunity to work on their research and engage with researchers at WIDER as well as other PhD students from around the world. I found that the researchers at WIDER were very busy but happy to make time to engage with the PhD fellows. Over the three months, fellows worked with their mentors and were encouraged to attend brown bag presentations and other events at WIDER. We also had the opportunity to attend seminars and workshops at the Helsinki Graduate School of Economics, an academic initiative by three Finnish universities: Aalto University, Hanken School of Economics, and the University of Helsinki. 

The spring 2025 cohort of PhD fellows benefited from a short course on using spatial data that was organised by WIDER, and were also invited to participate in WIDER's summer school, which focused on intergenerational social mobility. Overall, exposure to the WIDER network and the intensive workshops I participated in greatly helped my professional and academic development. 

One thing that I realised while at WIDER is the importance of networking and its effect on publishing. Dean Yang, a co-editor for the Journal of Development Economics, visited WIDER in May and gave some insight into the world of publishing in economics journals. Publishing is essential for anyone who wants to stay in academia, and desk rejections are less likely when editors are familiar with the authors, their work, and their affiliated institutions (more in this journal article).

Applying to and attending conferences, summer schools, and fellowships are some important ways to build networks.

PhD students at institutions in the Global South are often not informed about this important part of building a career as a post-doctorate researcher.

The major realisation during my three months at WIDER, however, was the importance of local knowledge in doing empirical work. My thesis focuses on the relationships between inequality, protest action, and xenophobic violence in South Africa. Several scholars I spoke with over the course of the fellowship were curious about why I wanted to study the relationship between protests and xenophobic violence, since these types of events are, in theory, unrelated. However, in South Africa, it is not uncommon for xenophobic attacks to follow or co-occur with protest action, as multiple case studies have demonstrated.

If the purpose of research is to understand the world we live in, it means that we must sometimes be willing to challenge the theory. This is particularly important in Africa, where the local context often does not align with theoretical understandings. Local knowledge is, therefore, necessary to inform and frame empirical research.