From Mongolia to South Sudan: the LSRI is pleased to announce the two latest recipients of the Ignacio Ellacuría Thesis Grant. 

The Ignacio Ellacuría Thesis Grant supports the fieldwork of two research students at the University of Oxford. The grant aims to encourage students to design their projects using an integral ecology approach that is transdisciplinary in its research design, sensitive to locality and participant perspectives and seeking to connect ecological, political, scientific, economic, and religious issues. Our two awardees for 2025 are:

Munkh-Erdene Gantulga
DPhil candidate at the School of Geography and the Environment. Munkh-Erdene's research explores how pastoralists in rural Mongolia perceive and use digital technologies, how these technologies influence their mobility and spatial practices, and how they support or challenge traditional livelihoods. The project uses a  transdisciplinary methodology that bridges anthropology, geography, environmental science, and digital studies. 

Matai Muon
DPhil candidate at the Oxford Department of International Development. Matai's research investigates the political economy of oil in South Sudan, Africa’s youngest yet impoverished oil-rich nation. Focusing on Rubkona County in Unity State, the country’s oldest oil-producing region, the research employs a case-study approach to explore subnational oil governance.  It will employ a methodology incorporating ethnographic fieldwork, oral histories, interviews, and policy analysis.
 

Matai and Munkh-Erdene join an evolving cohort of Ignacio Ellacuría scholars based at the LSRI. Their fieldwork will take place in summer 2025, and both will have an opportunity to present their findings in Spring 2026 to ensure integration of their findings into future LSRI methods and research.