Collaborative practice and research
Working with others towards increased social equality, engaging with public policy, governance and social change.
Combining experience as a practitioner and researcher, I seek to analyse and improve how public policy and governance structures function.
Image: Fieldwork in Huamachuco, Peru (2016). The annual corralling of vicuñas is socially and economically significant. Large numbers of people come from all over the District to gather vicuñas off high grazing land, an act of community making and ritualised exchange through labour. Vicuñas were re-introduced to the area through a relatively recent local government project intended to increase rural incomes.
Public policy and governance
Practice
I worked in the UK civil service (DFID, Treasury, Home Office) for over eight years.
In varying roles I developed my knowledge and skills:
Developing and making public policy
Leading and managing programmes and projects
Organisational strategy, governance and business improvement
Leading joint work with other national and international government departments, multilateral institutions, NGOs and business organisations towards common goals
Communicating with senior public officials and Ministers through verbal and written briefings
Writing public communications on policy, designing communications strategies
Chairing large cross-organisational meetings
Facilitating conferences
Research
Continuing a desire to understand how to make positive social changes through public policy, I undertook PhD research in Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Working in Peru, I focused on how local, national and international connections impact local communities’ participation in local budgeting and execution of public investment funds, which originate from mining and are mostly spent on infrastructure.
In addition to assessing public policy, governance and projects in their written, statistical and physical forms, my approach was ethnographic, living and working alongside communities, listening, observing, questioning and analysing to build a picture of how public policy takes place. This methodology reveals the complex interactions through space and time of identity formation which interrelate international – national – local levels of public policy formation into social and economic realities of everyday life.
Research themes:
Mining, taxation, public spending, devolution, participatory governance, infrastructures, global commodity flows, moral economy, reciprocity, identity, socio-economic change, economic growth, ‘progress’, boundary objects, inequality and the negotiation of power.
As a teenager, my Mum called me Anna with a banner.
And basically I still am.
The way I tell it to myself, is that it all started as a young teenager watching the film ‘The Power of One’ on TV. I was so moved by the injustice I had been shown, that I wrote an essay about the importance of the fight for equality, liberty, and justice. It was then that I started to write poetry about class, race and gender. I was also fascinated by the travels of Michael Palin on TV, and the photojournalism from broadsheets which I collected and pasted to my walls.
At sixteen, I was lucky enough to visit Malawi, and the experience changed me, making real the people and places I had previously only imagined from a distance. I felt compelled to connect, listen and engage with people from different backgrounds and in different parts of the world in order to understand more. Since then I have been privileged to have lived and worked in the UK, Malawi, Spain, Mexico, China, Peru and Tunisia.
To this day I build on these experiences, continuing my passion to connect with others, to listen, observe, analyse, share and discuss: Joining together to create positive social change.