Dr. Laura Mann

Biography

Laura Mann is a sociologist whose research focuses on political economy and development, with a regional concentration in East Africa, including Sudan, Kenya, and Rwanda. She has conducted collaborative research on information and communication technologies (ICTs) and business process outsourcing (BPO) in Asia, and has engaged in fieldwork in North America as part of a project on the digitization of global agriculture. Prior to joining the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) as an Associate Professor, she has worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, and at the African Studies Centre in Leiden. Mann earned her PhD from the University of Edinburgh and is part of the Editorial Working Group of the Review of African Political Economy. She also holds a research affiliate position at the Firoz Lalji Centre for Africa. Her current research interests revolve around questions of the benefits of knowledge and technology in the global economy, especially how to capture and widen the control and benefits in this context. She supervises MSc students in International Development, particularly on topics related to economic transformation in Africa and the Middle East, digitization in global development and trade, and the intellectual histories of development, including Islamic finance and Sudanese politics.

Research Interests

Experience