Naomi Hossain is the Global Research Professor of Development Studies at SOAS University of London, and a political sociologist whose research centers on how people living with poverty and precarity get the public services they need. She specializes in the politics of Bangladesh’s development, and, beyond Bangladesh, in the contentious politics of disasters and public service delivery, with a focus on state accountability and responsiveness, protests, civil society, and the role of aid.

 

With an academic background in philosophy, politics, economics (University of Oxford), social anthropology (the London School of Economics) and development studies (University of Sussex), Naomi’s work aims to be collaborative, inter-disciplinary, and accessible. She has worked with researchers, social movements, civil society, artists, governments and aid agencies around the world. She has researched extensively across Bangladesh, and managed large international studies spanning another 20 countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe. Her work has examined elite perceptions of poverty, accountability and complaints mechanisms, food riots and energy protests, the politics of educational reform, civil society and civic space, the political effects of disasters, and the role of protest in holding public authorities to account.

 

Naomi is Bangladeshi-Irish and has lived in Bangladesh, Indonesia, the UK and the US. She previously worked at the Research and Evaluation Division of BRAC, the world’s largest NGO; the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University; and at the Accountability Research Center at American University in Washington DC.