Dr Amber Murrey awarded prestigious British Academy/Wolfson Fellowship

The British Academy and the Wolfson Foundation awarded funding to Dr Amber Murrey, Associate Professor of Political Geography and Tutorial Fellow at Mansfield College, Oxford, for her research titled, 'Extraction and the Social Scientist: Decolonising Research on the Politics of Knowledge, Agency and Resistance in Natural Resource Geographies.'

Dr Murrey looks forward to beginning the newly funded project, saying, ‘Receiving the BA Wolfson Fellowship is an incredible honour. I am tremendously grateful to the scholars and thinkers who have influenced my thinking, and who have mentored and collaborated with me over the years. This project seeks to reframe conversations on the politics of studying geographies of extraction and focuses on demystifying the roles that social scientists have played in supporting and challenging extractivism globally, with a particular focus on Cameroon and Nigeria’.

In December and January 2021, Dr Murrey collaborated to convene a 5-day writing workshop for early career scholars in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia and Buea, Cameroon with funding from a British Academy Writing Workshop Grant. Through the BA/Wolfson Fellowship, she will continue her commitment to active and engaged scholarship.

The award aims to promote and facilitate high-quality research in the humanities and social sciences across the UK. Worth up to £130,000 over three years and designed to empower early-career researchers who show exceptional talent in both research and public engagement, the British Academy/Wolfson Fellowships provide researchers with time away from some of their administrative and teaching duties to pursue outstanding research, along with funding for public engagement and travel, to ensure their work reaches a global audience.

Dr Murrey’s article, 'Confronting the deafening silence on race in geography education in England: learning from anti-racist, decolonial and Black geographies’ written with Steven Puttick remains the most read article in the journal 'Geography.'

Commenting on the fellowships announced today, Hetan Shah, Chief Executive of the British Academy, said: ‘We are delighted to announce the third cohort of our prestigious British Academy/Wolfson Fellowships. Made possible thanks to the generous support of the Wolfson Foundation, the Fellowships will support these exceptional scholars to undertake bold and imaginative research. We wish our new British Academy/Wolfson Fellows the greatest success and look forward to seeing the results of their research and public engagement.’

Professor Simon Swain, Vice-President for Research and Higher Education Policy at the British Academy, said: ‘It is fantastic to see such a diverse and innovative cohort of awardees and the selection panel was incredibly impressed by the depth and quality of applicants. The 2022 British Academy/Wolfson Fellows exemplify the absolute value of innovative and internationally oriented research in the humanities and social sciences. I loo forward to following the progress of these projects.’

Further information

• You can listen to a recent interview with Dr Amber Murrey on The Brief podcast, where she talks about the significance of the political life and praxis of the assassinated Pan-African Marxist leader Thomas Sankara. She has appeared as a panellist on the BBC World News Programme The Forum, to discuss Sankara, the former president of Burkina Faso, and her book on the topic, ‘A Certain Amount of Madness’: The Life, Politics and Legacies of Thomas Sankara’.
• Along with Professor Patricia Daley, Dr Murrey delivered the 2021 Royal Geographical Society (with IRB) Plenary Lecture for the journal Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography. Their agenda-setting lecture, ‘Defiant Scholarship: Dismantling Coloniality in Contemporary African Geographies’ has been published in the journal alongside critical responses from four leading geographers of African societies.
• Dr Murrey co-coordinates the Political Worlds Research Cluster at the School of Geography and the Environment. The cluster is the School’s hub for innovative and transdisciplinary work on space, place and politics.
• Find out more information about Dr Murrey’s work online. You can follow updates on her work and research on Twitter @AmberMurrey.