Master’s Fund supports student’s research trip to Ethiopia

A St Catharine’s postgraduate student has just returned from fieldwork in Ethiopia supported by the Master’s Fund, which was created in 2021 as a result of a generous donation of £100,000 from Jon (1983, Natural Sciences) and Ann Ardron.

Sripriya (Priya) Iyengar Srivatsa, a PhD student at the University of Cambridge’s Centre of Development Studies, used this pilot trip to gather valuable information on gender and compliance with taxation, as part of her broader PhD thesis on the state capacity and taxation in Sub-Saharan Africa. Her work looks at three important aspects of taxation – gender, traditional authorities and natural resources.

Priya explains, “There are well-established tools that capture data on attitudes to taxation around the world over time, but these fail to account for women’s perspectives. Women experience so many aspects of life differently to men, so why would tax somehow be protected from these differences? I’m aiming to use qualitative methods to dig deeper, identify challenges and, ultimately, devise new survey instruments for future use.”

Priya’s PhD is funded by the International Centre for Tax and Development but her recent research trip to Ethiopia this September received strong support from the Master’s Fund. During her 15 days in Addis Ababa, she held six focus group discussions with residents, disaggregated by gender across different age groups, and involving both formal market participants and informal market participants. She also interviewed several top government officials within the City Administration of Addis Ababa, businesswomen and civil society actors in the country.

Her methodology was informed by the Q-squared approach wherein a researcher uses insights from qualitative research to guide the development of quantitative research tools and projects. She was trained in these methods by her Cambridge supervisor Professor Shailaja Fennell, who also supported her in the development of the discussion and interview instruments.

“The opportunity to visit the country I study, and embed oneself within a community is a privilege, and one that deeply enriches the work I produce for my PhD and beyond.”

The scope of Priya’s research grew when she started to examine gender and taxation in two countries:

“I started out comparing anonymised administrative data from revenue authorities with responses in each country where we have access to such data. This quickly led to the discovery of more questions thus resulting in the initiative to visit Ethiopia for qualitative fieldwork. Next, I will be travelling to Sierra Leone and Rwanda (due to existing connections within these countries and my own previous experience living in Sierra Leone). My original two-way comparative study is now looking likely to become a Pan-African, cross-country study. I hope to complete this research in partnership with the governments of the countries involved in order to support and inform meaningful reform.”

Born in Bangalore, Priya joined St Catharine’s after completing her Master’s at SOAS University of London and then working as an Overseas Development Institute fellow in Sierra Leone on a vast range of projects under the supervision of Dr Yakama Jones, who Priya describes as “inspiring”.