Beyond the Classroom: My Journey Doing a Placement-Based Master’s Dissertation in Sierra Leone

My experience undertaking a placement-based master’s dissertation in Sierra Leone

“I come as one, but I stand as ten thousand.” These words by Maya Angelou have been a lifelong mantra for me. They remind me that wherever I go, I carry the experiences, lessons and contributions of the people and communities who have shaped my journey. When I began my master’s degree in Africa and International Development at the University of Edinburgh, I knew I wanted my dissertation to be more than an academic exercise. I wanted to conduct research that connected my experience as a development practitioner with the theories, questions and debates I had encountered in the classroom. Before moving to Edinburgh, I had spent several years building and managing a non-profit organisation in Nigeria, working with teenage mothers and girls in marginalised communities. Through this work, I had experienced the opportunities that international development funding creates, but I had also encountered some of the pressures that accompany it. I had become increasingly interested in understanding how donor funding influences the decisions, priorities and independence of grassroots organisations. “Who determines what gets funded? How much freedom do local organisations have to pursue their own priorities? What happens when an organisation’s mission does not fit neatly within donor expectations?” These were questions I had encountered in practice, and I wanted to examine them more critically through research. That interest eventually took me to Sierra Leone, where I spent five weeks conducting fieldwork with Women Against Violence and Exploitation in Society (WAVES), a women’s rights organisation working to end female genital cutting (FGC). What began as a dissertation placement became one of the most i…