Young Scholars Matchmaking Workshop 2020 - Call for Ideas

Application to participate in the PEDL Young Scholars Matchmaking Workshop is now closed.

November 30 and December 7-8, 2020
Online Event

The Private Enterprise Development in Low-Income Countries (PEDL) programme pursues a research agenda that aims to better understand what determines the strength of market forces driving efficiency in low-income countries (LICs).

To strengthen the links between young scholars in lower- and higher-income countries working in this rapidly growing field of research, the PEDL programme is organising a virtual matchmaking and project development workshop. This workshop aims to bring together pre-dissertation PhD candidates from institutions in higher-income countries with PhD candidates and young scholars from institutions in lower-income countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Young scholars should be no more than three years out of their PhD.

Over the course of two weeks, we will gather for three days with the aim of fostering new ideas and developing projects, grant proposals, and, importantly, collaborations across these groups for research on the frontier of private enterprise development in Africa and South Asia.

The workshop will begin with a keynote highlighting open questions and opportunities for possible contributions. Participants will then come together for an Ideas Fair, where they will pitch research interests and ideas that are open to collaboration. Based on this initial meeting, participants will be grouped according to their interests and, with the support of workshop leaders, work together to identify, develop and present joint projects, possibly leading to grant proposals fundable by PEDL or other organisations. The best ideas can be presented at the PEDL Young Scholars Conference 2020, where teams will be able to receive feedback from senior scholars in the field.

Those interested in participating should download and complete the application form and prepare a brief letter of motivation and an up-to-date version of their CV. The application form will ask candidates to clearly state the research question(s), potential methods to answer the question, and the geographic focus of the project. The ideas that you present in the application form should be ones which you are open to collaborating on with other workshop participants. PhD candidates should also arrange to have a letter of support from their dissertation supervisor sent to us.

To submit your application, please compile the following three documents into one PDF document: the completed application form, a letter of motivation and an up-to-date version of your CV. Please upload this PDF to the CEPR Portal here by October 30, 2020 23:59 GMT (extended deadline).

On the Portal, you will need to create an account here to submit an application. Once logged in, you can find the PEDL Workshop 2020 page via the link here. To upload your collated PDF, check the box where it asks, “Would you like to submit a paper?” and a new option will appear to upload your document. Please use “Workshop Application” as title and abstract and ignore other sections such as co-authors.

We aim to inform accepted applicants by mid-November 2020. Any queries about the event or application process can be sent to [email protected]. Letters of support should also be sent directly to [email protected].

Applicants that are selected to participate in the Young Scholars Workshop 2020 are also invited to attend the PEDL Young Scholars Conference 2020. An application to present at the Conference does not preclude an application to the Workshop or vice versa.

 

Morgan Hardy, NYU Abu Dhabi

Christian Meyer, University of Oxford

Chris Woodruff, University of Oxford, PEDL and CEPR