Senior Lecturer in Geography, Dr Philippa Williams, has been formally recognised as a world-leading academic for her research on geographies of peace, everyday politics and digital life in India, and has been awarded the prestigious Philip Leverhulme Prize.
The Philip Leverhulme Prize is designed to recognise and facilitate the work of outstanding research scholars of proven achievement, whose work has had international impact and whose future career is exceptionally promising.
Dr Williams’ research has been animated by questions concerning how ‘the state’ is experienced, how citizenship is articulated and how marginality, particularly in the context of violence and nonviolence is lived in India. Most recently her work has focused on the impact of digital transformations on everyday political life in India by examining how party-political workers and ordinary voters produce, consume and share digital political messaging. This focus on digital life and democracy intervenes in digital utopian imaginaries that perceive a digital future as the answer to deepening democracy.
The Philip Leverhulme Prize will be used to support a new project on the political anatomy of digital healthcare in India, a study that will examine the power and politics of digital development. The project will examine important questions of our time concerning the technological and political agendas that are driving India’s digital health ecosystem, the value of healthcare data, and the implications of digital health for ordinary citizens.
Dr Williams said: “I am so thrilled to receive the Philip Leverhulme Prize. I thoroughly enjoy teaching and researching geography at Queen Mary, and this is a further privilege to have my research recognised in this way as well as the opportunity it will bring to develop my work on everyday political and digital life in India. ”
Dr Williams is the fifth successful recipient of the Philip Leverhulme Prize from Queen Mary’s School of Geography since the prize was established in 2001. The prize comprises a supplement of £100,000 to go towards any purpose related to the advancement of the research or artistic practice of the awarded recipient.
For more on the Philip Leverhulme Prize see here
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