Routledge/Round Table Commonwealth Studentships 2022-23

Romitesh is the winner of the 2022-23 award for a PhD student registered at an ACU member university outside the UK. He is a PhD student at the Department of Pacific Affairs within the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs at the Australian National University.

His research examines the symbiotic relationship between politics and masculinities in Fiji. Romitesh will be using the Routledge/Round Table Commonwealth Studentship award to pursue initial fieldwork in Fiji during the upcoming Fijian general elections to explore the myriad ways through which the historically and socially created concepts of gender, race, and other social identities are experienced and how these concepts are inextricably linked to masculine identities in Fiji. In doing so, he plans to trace how masculinities are constructed and performed, revealing how masculine power and state power are multi-layered, valorised, and challenged.

Victor is the winner of the 2022-23 award for a PhD student registered at a university in the UK. He is a Nigerian PhD student at the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick.

He has worked as a student missionary, a news writer in several media outlets in Nigeria, and a teaching assistant in the United Kingdom. He also owns a YouTube channel with more than forty thousand subscribers as of September 2022. On his channel he shares international scholarship tips and opportunities. Victor’s research revolves around African politics, African political economy, human security, and international development.

His research interrogates, both quantitatively and qualitatively, how voters respond when their elected politicians change political parties – whether they punish or reward them, in a non-Western context. He particularly examines this phenomenon in Africa, using Nigeria, the biggest democracy on the continent, as a case study. His research sits against the backdrop of ongoing debates on voter agency and party institutionalisation in Africa.

With the Routledge/Round Table Commonwealth Studentship award, he aims to produce an academic paper for the Round Table and plan conference presentations within and outside Africa. He also plans to record a podcast on his key findings on voters’ response to party switching in Africa, and disseminate these both in academic and policy spaces.