Chiara Chiavaroli from the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics has won the 2025 DSA Thesis Prize for her thesis entitled “It Rains Miscarriages: A feminist investigation of toxic risks in the Bajo Cauca region (Colombia).”.

The judges described the thesis as: “as an extremely well-written, readable, and accessible thesis that speaks to multiple areas of interest. They noted its strong theoretical basis as it positions itself in dialogue with three main bodies of scholarship: Feminist Political Ecology, Critical Latin American Science and Technology Studies and Feminist Geography.”

“It provides a compelling account of extractive capitalism in Colombia and Latin America and tries to counterbalance ecofeminist portrayals of women inhabiting contexts of environmental precarity in the so-called Global South as in need of saving from environmental catastrophes and biomedical toxic impairments. The field research is extensive, engaging with toxic contamination as an object of ethnographic research across different “scales of analysis” (e.g. territory, household, body, womb). It uses participatory video, mapping and archival research, and reflects thoughtfully on ethics, advocacy, and the limitations of the research.”

“The five essays not only explore vulnerability, but also interrogate narratives of risk themselves, for example, by focusing on the “social lives of mercury and glyphosphate” or looking at the state-citizens relationship through an analysis of criminalising discourses performed against “contaminating” actors. It makes the timely point that policy is more concerned with women as reproductive agents, rather than as a focus of attention, and they are blamed for being “risky” regarding contamination, even though the drivers that contribute to this are engrained in unjust social and economic structures.”

You can read the findings from Chiara’s research at the following journal articles:

The DSA thesis prize for PhD students working in the field of international development, development studies and development economics has been running annually since 2022 to award the best PhD thesis in these fields of studies from across current DSA Institutional Members.

Chiara will receive £500, plus the offer of full funding to attend DSA2025 to present her research in person.

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