Ahmed El Assal, PhD

Institutional Affiliations

I am a visiting postdoctoral researcher with the Crisis, Law, and Politics (CLA) research group at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam, in the Netherlands. I obtained my doctoral degree as part of a European joint doctorate funded by Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions, between Erasmus University Rotterdam and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands, as part of the ADAPTED programme (Eradicating Poverty: Pathways Towards Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals). I also hold an MA in Governance, Development, and Public Policy from the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex in the UK. During my PhD, I have also undertaken research secondments at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa and Makerere University in Uganda.

Research Agenda

Overall, I am interested in how politics shapes development outcomes and how political interests and incentives shape development policy design and implementation. My research focuses on the interplay between institutional configurations and power dynamics in shaping so called "pro-poor" public policies. My doctoral research critically examined the politics of accountability and citizens’ claims-making within social policy programmes in Uganda, with a particular focus on education, social protection, and the NGO sector. This research analysed how clientelist political settlements shape accountability institutions and service delivery performance across different social policy domains. Drawing on a structural political economy approach, the political settlements framework, and institutionalist accountability, this research contributed to critical debates on principal-agent theory, the politics of development, state–society relations, social accountability, and transformative social policy in the Global South. This work is particularly timely given growing concerns over democratic backsliding, the decline of official development assistance for development policy, increasing distrust of politicians and public officials, and the mounting debt crisis facing many African countries, which are reshaping state-society dynamics. 

My work also examines state-civil society dynamics in authoritarian contexts. For instance, my previous research examined the resilience and evolving dynamics of civil society organisations in Egypt amid shifting power configurations following the 2011 Arab Spring protests. My work focused particularly on human rights organisations and the strategies they adopted to navigate an increasingly restrictive legal and regulatory environment governing civil society. It also explored state practices aimed at controlling foreign aid, reshaping avenues for youth participation, and extending state influence over both domains.

Inspired by my fieldwork experience and my positionality in Western academia, I have developed a second research stream on the politics of knowledge production. This body of work interrogates the underrepresentation of researchers from the Global South in development studies and challenges the binary framing of researchers’ positionality. This strand of research extends to questions of “reversing the gaze” in knowledge production, advancing epistemic justice through the recognition and representation of Southern epistemologies, and critically examining the ethical dimensions of fieldwork and knowledge production.

Publications

My research has been published in leading journals, including Politics and Governance, Development Policy Review, Development in Practice, and VOLUNTAS, as well as several book chapters published with Routledge. I am currently co-editing my first book project, "Southern Researchers and the Politics of Knowledge Production: Narrating from the Margins," expected to be published in October 2026 as part of Routledge's Rethinking Development Series. My writing has also been published on the London School of Economics (LSE) Impact Blog, the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) The Loop Blog, and the Oxfam Views and Voices Blog. My academic service includes peer review for several academic journals and assessment of funding applications for several organisations. I am also an editor and contributor to the Hague-based political economy magazine The Contrapuntal.

Background

In addition to my academic endeavour, I am a multi-disciplinary international development practitioner with more than 15 years of experience in research, evaluation, and complex programme management.  My practice experience in the international development sector includes working with international and regional organisations and civil society groups such as Oxfam, German Development Cooperation (GIZ), and the Academy for International Development (AID) on public participation and civic engagement, human rights education and promotion, inclusive democratic governance, and public sector reform. I have also provided advisory and consulting services to several development organisations, including Save the Children, Plan International, IBF, Social Direct, CONEMUND, and the Anna Lindh Foundation.

I have received several prestigious academic scholarships and awards, including the Best PhD Article Award from the Erasmus Graduate School of Social Sciences and the Humanities, as well as the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Fellowship, funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme. I was also awarded a Chevening Scholarship for my master's degree, funded by the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).

I am a Pan-Africanist scholar, and my research and professional activities have spanned diverse regions across the Global South. Over the years, I have worked on/in  several countries in the Middle East, including Jordan, Lebanon, Yemen, and Syria; North Africa, including Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, and Libya; East Africa, including Uganda and Ethiopia; Southern Africa, particularly South Africa; and South Asia, including Nepal and India. I was born in Cairo, Egypt, and I am currently based in The Hague, the Netherlands.