Rachel Tough from UEA for her thesis Vietnam’s War on COVID-19: an Ethnography of Pandemic in Ho Chi Minh City. Highly commended was Iris Ru-Yu Lin from IDS for her thesis Solastalgia and transfiguration: emotional and adaptive responses of the Monpa transhumant pastoralists to climate and environmental change of the Himalayan borderland in Western Arunachal Pradesh, India.

The judges felt that this year we had had an exceptionally wide-ranging and high-quality field with submissions from 13 institutions on topics ranging from income inequality in Chile to social reproduction in Northwestern China.

The judges highlighted the way that the methodological chapter cleverly lays out a conceptual and practical underpinning for the research, engaging well with literature and drawing on concepts in a bricolage of theoretical ideas that come together in a coherent and compelling whole. The empirical chapters are well grounded in theory, and the research feels highly original, not least because the circumstances in which it took place were unique. The “real-time” ethnography, the relational approach of the researcher, and the ability to draw out and connect different stories to create an overarching narrative exploring state-citizen relations in the context of Vietnam is very well done. Finally, the text is extremely engaging and a pleasure to read, with a nice logical flow that pulls diverse elements together to create a worthwhile whole, grounded in a “human-centred analysis”.

Rachel receives £350, plus the offer of full funding to attend DSA2026 to present her research in person.

On Lin, the judges felt the thesis was underpinned by a solid and reflective ethnographic methodology – based on a full immersion within the research setting – and one in which the researcher is was also a key participant and focus of the research. It engages with and makes a substantial contribution to growing work on emotions in development studies in both its analysis and development of the theory. Overall, the thesis was felt to be a hugely impressive by the judging panel in its methodology and highly original thesis. It offers new ways of thinking and understanding not only the impact of climate change, but also broader change processes, showing the importance of seeing processes through the eyes of affected communities themselves. 

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.

Iris receives £150, plus the offer of a fee waiver at DSA2026 to present her research in person.

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