This book investigates the challenges faced by early career researchers from the Global South who are working on social science or international development research. Delving deeply into the experiences of a wide range of researchers, the book critically examines and complicates the notions of insider and outsider, inviting the reader to consider who produces knowledge, and how it is produced.  

As discussions of epistemic justice and decoloniality within social science and international development research grow in prominence, this book argues that Global South researchers can play a significant role in reversing the gaze and shaping intellectual discussions about how, by whom, and for whose benefit knowledge is created. Combining theoretical discussions with case studies and essays from fieldwork, this book demonstrates the multi-layered and complex positionality which Global South researchers navigate while conducting research. The book considers how Global South researchers bring specific experiences of race, gender, religion, values, and politics to their work, which are often concealed or censored for fear of affecting academic analytical production. This experience of fieldwork can challenge static and linear assumptions of the positionality and ethics of a researcher working in the field. 

This innovative book will be an important read for early career researchers working within social science and international development research, as well as for lecturers and practitioners supporting researchers from the Global South in conducting their research and their fieldwork.

The accountability agenda has gained significant prominence in social science debates over the past two decades. While accountability has often been studied through rational choice theory, particularly by conceptualising accountability through principal–agent relationships, this dissertation advances a different perspective by foregrounding political contestation and power relations in understanding accountability processes in the Global South. 

Drawing on three case studies from Uganda, the dissertation provides an in-depth investigation of accountability mechanisms embedded in social policy programmes, with particular focus on the education, social protection, and NGO sectors. It asks the question of How do political dynamics reconfigure accountability mechanisms and citizens’ ability to hold state and non-state actors accountable for the provision of quality public services in Uganda? 

It argues that accountability relationships in service delivery are inherently shaped by political elites’ incentives and interests, the capacity of state institutions, the role of non-state actors in service provision, and the underlying political settlement structuring state-society relations. 

El Assal, A.; Hafez, Y., & Abasli, I. (forthcoming). Centring the South: On fieldwork, positionality, and epistemic justice. In A. Abasli; A. El Assal; & Y. Hafez (Ed.), Southern Researchers and the Politics of Knowledge production: Narrating from the Margins. Routledge. 

Hafez, S., & El Assal, A. (2025). Local Humanitarianism and Organisational Complexities: Implementation of Safeguarding Measures. In I. Natil (Ed.), Civil Society and Local Ownership in the Global South: Responses to Conflict and Militarism (1 ed., pp. 10-27). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003565048-2 

El Assal, A., & Marzouk, A. (2023). Civil society organisations’ public diplomacy and youth political participation in Egypt. In I. Natil (Ed.), Public diplomacy and civil society organisations (pp. 74–92). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003441465-7 

El Assal, A., & Marzouk, A. (2020). Reinvention of nationalism and the moral panic against foreign aid in Egypt. In I. Natil, V. Malila, & Y. Sai (Eds.), Barriers to Effective Civil Society Organisations (1st ed., pp. 59-76). Routledge (Taylor & Francis Group). https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003053040-5 

El Assal, A. (2019). Human rights organizations and navigating the political configuration of power in post-2011 Egypt. In The Power of Civil Society in the Middle East and North Africa (1st Edition ed., pp. 113-137). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429265006-8