Laura Mann

Laura Mann is an economic sociologist whose research focuses on the political economy of markets and state-building in Africa. She received her Masters and PhD from the Centre of African Studies at the University of Edinburgh and a BSc in Environmental Policy and Economics from the London School of Economics. Before joining the ASC, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford.

Her PhD examined the impact of tertiary education expansion and economic liberalization on trust relations and the flow of information between managers, job-seekers and civil servants in the Sudanese labour market. She then worked on a joint project between the University of Oxford, the University of Nairobi and the National University of Rwanda, examining the effects of broadband internet on the tea, tourism and outsourcing value chains of Kenya and Rwanda. At the ASC, she is developing a project examining how new information and communication technologies are making informal agriculture and transport more visible to African governments and formal businesses.