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Overview

Professor Gina Porter

Professor


Affiliations
Affiliation
Professor in the Department of Anthropology

Biography

I have worked at Durham University since 1986.  My research is focused principally around mobilities in Africa  and combines ethnographic approaches with a strong interest in spatial perspectives.  I have undertaken extensive field research in diverse African countries - Nigeria, Ghana, Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya, Tunisia and South Africa- and consider myself primarily an Africanist, though I have also been involved in field studies in Brazil, India, Papua New Guinea and the UK.  I currently lead a collaborative research study of young men's walking practices in low income neighbourhoods in South Africa, in collaboration with the University of the Western Cape and the NGO Transaid.  This builds from a previous [2019-2023] three-country ESRC GCRF-funded study I led in South Africa, Nigeria and Tunisia: 'Youth engagement and skills acquisition within Africa's transport sector: promoting a gender agenda towards transitions into meaningful work'.

Other research I have conducted mostly relates to mobility issues [mobile phones as virtual mobility, gender and transport, transport-energy linkages, older people's mobility and access to services, Intermediate Means of Transport, off-road communities and issues of physical access, social networks of refugee youth] or to marketing and trade [market institutions, conflict in market place trade, gender issues in rural trade, contract farming, local agricultural labour markets]. 

Uneven power relationships and associated issues of exclusion are linking themes through my work, much of which has a strong gender component. Associated with this is a focus on developing innovative participatory methodologies for effective field research (notably co-investigation involving children, young women, young men and older people trained as peer researchers; mobile methods; networked approaches).  I am a co-Director of Durham's Centre for Social Justice and Community Action. 

Topics on which I have supervised British and overseas postgraduates include: women working in the transport sector in Kenya, female peer leaders and sport for development in Zambia, gender and embodied mobility in Ghana, gendering of sustainability in Cuban organic agriculture, transport impacts on agricultural production in Ghana, microcredit and transport in Ghana, road impacts on women's health in Nepal, masculinities and microfinance in Colombia, trust and farmer-trader relations in Ghana, decentralisation and poverty alleviation in Ghana, gender and fuelwood knowledges in Kenya, sanitation issues in Nigeria, empowerment in Honduras.

I have undertaken advisory work for diverse organisations, including international NGOs, the British Council, UNHabitat, DFID [Africa Community Access Programme AFCAP] and the African Development Bank. 

Research Projects

• Transport and youth employment in Africa: transforming the gender agenda [focus on young women as transport user and workers in the sector, Abuja, Cape Town and Tunis].

• Mobility practices of vulnerable populations in Africa, urban and rural [including COVID impacts]

• Participatory Action Research: peer research applications in the transport sector

• Mobility, age and inter-generational relations [Tanzania, Nigeria]

• Women’s employment in the transport sector [Global South]

• Women’s energy poverty, vulnerabilities and precarity in the everyday [peri-urban Nigeria]

• Mobile phones – impacts on young people’s lives and life chances in Africa [Ghana, Malawi, South Africa]

• Women’s livelihoods and market access, Africa

• Children, transport and mobility in sub-Saharan Africa: developing a child-centred evidence base to improve policy and change thinking across Africa

Research interests

  • Children and young people
  • Gendered mobilities
  • Market institutions
  • Mobile phones/ICTs
  • Older people's mobility
  • Participatory methodologies
  • Sub-Saharan Africa
  • Transport, mobility and social exclusion

Publications

Authored book

Chapter in book

Conference Paper

Edited book

Journal Article

Other (Print)

Report

Working Paper