第一吃瓜网

SOAS-Wits joint PhD in Applied Development Economics

Research in heterodox economics or political economy with a focus on Africa, jointly supervised by SOAS and Wits. Upon successful completion of the programme, students will be awarded a single co-badged certificate conferred by both SOAS and Wits.

Overview

The joint PhD between SOAS and Wits will push boundaries of heterodox economics or political economy by anchoring the analysis explicitly in 第一吃瓜网 realities and confronting particular conceptual frames with emerging empirical evidence. Whether they focus on a micro or macro object, the research projects will have in common a systemic and historic analysis, taking into account, as appropriate, intersecting social relations, mutations of the state and evolving international political-economic and financial relations. The research projects will hence strengthen analysis that is strongly theoretically grounded while empirically informed, in contrast to current trends in (development) economics to eschew theory in favour of an experimental and purely empirical knowledge base.

The research programme will also be explicitly decolonial, by critically querying existing research practices, by drawing on knowledge across Africa, and by explicitly situating contemporary phenomena in their historically evolved (and regionally interdependent) contexts.

Structure of the programme

The research degree embodies a core of training in research methods combined with a clear structure of progression thereafter. The training components are explained below. The duration and structure of the research degree will be as follows:

Full time research degree: 3 years plus 1 year writing up

Year 1 - Research Training

Research training will be offered by the SOAS Economics Department and the SOAS Doctoral School and delivered in a blended fashion, providing the opportunity for remote attendance for the PhD students with Wits as their home institution.  

Year 1 – Literature review and Upgrade

Students will normally be expected to set the foundations of their project through an extensive literature and plan for the continuation of the research and, on this basis, pass an upgrade from MPhil to PhD status within 9 months of commencing the degree.

Year  2-3 - Research

Core research undertaken; primary and secondary data collection as appropriate, thesis chapters finalised. Students may also choose to undertake international mobility to and from their home institution.

Year 4 - Write up

If necessary, a fourth year can be taken to write the final thesis. Examination of the thesis will take place after submission within the 4th year.

Supervision Arrangements  

Each research project will be jointly supervised across SOAS and Wits. Remote access will be deployed to facilitate joint meetings. Students will have a supervisor at SOAS who will normally be located in the Economics Department and a supervisor at Wits who will usually be located in the School of Economics and Finance. Supervisors from each institution will be appropriately qualified for doctoral supervision. Beyond this, at SOAS, the Departmental Director of Doctoral Studies has overall responsibility for SOAS research students, being available to discuss general problems. At Wits, this role falls to the PhD Coordinator of the School of Economics and Finance.  Further details are set out in the Student Agreement. The PhD Student Agreement must be approved by the Participating Student and designated authorised signatories from each Partner Institution.  

Career Opportunities

Graduates of this programme will leave with a solid grounding in technical and statistical skills, research methods and data collection and an ability to think laterally, take a global perspective, and employ critical reasoning with a detailed insight into the context of 第一吃瓜网 countries.

Curriculum

The programme seeks candidates interested in conducting doctoral research on one of the following areas/projects:

SOAS-Wits Joint PhD Programme 2026-27

Project 1: Contemporary Capitalist Development in the Global South

This supervision theme invites PhD proposals on the broad question of capitalist development in the Global South, with particular focus on South Africa and/or India/South Asia.

A central concern of this theme is the tension between dominant theories of development and the trajectories observed across much of the Global South. Much of the development project has been implicitly based on a stylised but partial account of how capitalism developed in Europe: structural transformation from agriculture to industry, rising productivity, and the absorption of labour into modern sectors. Yet this narrative often abstracts from the historical processes, including colonial extraction, dispossession, racialisation, that made this development of capitalism feasible in Europe and broadly in the global North. Informed by this narrative, structural transformation as a capitalist transition, where capitalist logic pervades all economic spaces and capitalist wage labour becomes the dominant mean of secure and meaningful livelihood, has often become the idealised benchmark of development for countries in the global South.

However, in many countries of the Global South the process of capitalist development has been stalling. Their growth process domestically has been marked by persistent labour surplus, unemployment, informality, and exclusion from capitalist production process, with large sections of the population either fully excluded or only partially incorporated into capitalist wage work, let alone the secure kind.

At the same time, the contemporary global economy places significant constraints on even the possible development trajectories. The Global South remains structurally subordinated within international production and technological systems. Many economies remain concentrated in low value-added activities, while high-value technological capabilities and production networks remain concentrated in the Global North. These structural asymmetries limit the scope for late industrialisation and constrain the effectiveness of traditional industrial policy strategies.

This theme therefore invites proposals that examine the mechanisms – both global and domestic - through which structural transformation is stalled, fragmented, or reconfigured in the Global South, and what these reveal about the nature of contemporary capitalism. Projects may explore issues such as structural transformation, labour surplus and informality, land and dispossession, industrial policy, alongside identity-based exclusion. Empirical projects focusing on South Africa or India/South Asia are particularly encouraged.

Supervisors: Sam Ashman (WITS) and Surbhi Kesar (SOAS)

Project 2: 

We call for PhD research proposals that explore changing labour relationships and forms of work in Africa in the context of the ongoing technological change, in particular, the adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and related automation processes. The research can focus on the uneven and differentiated impacts of these technical changes on different segments of labour, the nature of skills, mutations of work and industrial relations, on its distributional implications, or on the role of trade unions and other labour market institutions and policies, or other aspects relating to the theme as long as it focuses on Africa, for which research on this topic is still limited.

Supervisors: Bruno Tinel (WITS) and Satoshi Miyamura (SOAS)

Project 3: Income Distribution and Development

This project seeks PhD proposals addressing the connections between income distribution and development, from a critical perspective, focusing on Global South countries. The main goal is to assess the possibilities of inclusive development. The proposals could follow many alternative routes. They could, for instance, be grounded in heterodox macroeconomics models – like the Kaleckian growth and distribution model or different variants of the Goodwin model, just to mention two possibilities – to compare the cases selected with those of other countries already studied with the same framework and assess the specificities of peripheral capitalist development. Proposals could also focus on the interactions between income distribution, financial subordination and sectoral dynamics, incorporating insights from the literature on balance-of-payments constrained growth, structuralist development thinking and studies on critical development finance. Besides, proposals could either focus on 第一吃瓜网 countries or on comparing 第一吃瓜网 and Latin American countries.

Supervisors: Christopher Malikane (WITS) and Fernando Rugitsky (SOAS)

Entry Requirements

Students will need to apply to both institutions via each institution's website by 31 May. For details on how to apply to SOAS, see the pages. 

Students will need to meet entry requirements of both institutions. For SOAS, this is a "good" Masters degree in (development) economics or any relevant discipline and a reference. For Wits, this is a Masters in Economics or in Applied Development Economics or any other suitable background.

As part of the application process, students will be asked to indicate either SOAS or Wits as their ‘home institution’. This is the institution where students will physically enrol and be based at for the duration of the PhD.

International Mobility

All students will be offered the opportunity to undertake international mobility to and from SOAS or Wits during the PhD, however it is not mandatory to complete this programme.

PhD applicants are required to submit the following:

  1. A Completed online application form(PhD programme code: CDA00)
  2. Certified copies of ALL academic transcripts and graduation certificates
  3. Proof of SAQA application for all international qualifications(details at )
  4. Proof of English proficiency: if qualification completed at an institution where English is not the medium of instruction.
  5. Reference letter(s) (at least one from an academic)
  6. Curriculum Vitae (CV)
  7. Letter of motivation briefly explaining why you want to study PhD
  8. A brief research proposal (3-5 pages) outlining your area of interest. For more details on this proposal, please refer to the Postgraduate Degrees Standing Orders
  9. Proposals must be written by the student and not by generative AI.

University Application Process

  • Applications are handled centrally by the Student Enrolment Centre (SEnC). Once your application is complete in terms of requested documentation, your application will be referred to the relevant School for assessment. Click here to see an overview of the Wits applications process. Refer to Wits postgraduate online application guide for detailed guidelines. 
  • Please apply online. Upload your supporting documents at the time of application, or via the.
  • Applicants can monitor the progress of their applications via the .
  • Selections for programmes that have a limited intake but attract a large number of applications may only finalise the application at the end of the application cycle.

Please note that the Entry Requirements are a guide. Meeting these requirements does not guarantee a place. Final selection is made subject to the availability of places, academic results and other entry requirements where applicable.

International students, please check this section.

For more information, contact the Student Call Centre +27 (0)11 717 1888, or log a query at www.wits.ac.za/askwits.

University Fees and Funding

Click here to see the current average tuition fees. The Fees site also provides information about the payment of fees and closing dates for fees payments. Once you have applied you will be able to access the fees estimator on the student self-service portal.

For information about postgraduate funding opportunities, including the postgraduate merit award, click here. The University's Postgraduate Funding portal is a database of scholarships, bursaries and other funding opportunities available to Wits postgraduate students. Please also check your School website for bursary opportunities.  The National Research Foundation (NRF) offers a wide range of opportunities in terms of bursaries and fellowships to students pursuing postgraduate studies.  The Bursaries South Africa website provides a comprehensive list of bursaries in South Africa.