Adil Sait is an MPhil/PhD candidate in Economic Geography at the Department of Geography and Environment, LSE, supervised by Prof. Simona Iammarino and Dr. Richard Perkins. His doctoral research is on natural resource dependence and economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa, focusing on the case of conflict minerals, and is affiliated with LSE’s International Inequalities Institute Doctoral Programme.
Adil holds a First Class BSc. (Hons) in Urban Planning from the Bartlett School of Planning, UCL (2015-18), and was an Erasmus Exchange student at the University of Amsterdam (2017); and an EPSRC-funded Researcher at the Technical University of Munich (2017). His LSE masters’ (2018-19, with Distinction) research, on Local Economic Development in Liberia, was funded by the LSE’s Firoz Lalji Centre for Africa and co-sponsored by Habitat for Humanity International and the Liberian National Housing Authority.
Adil served as rapporteur for the Network of Excellence in Land Governance in Africa (NELGA) representing North African universities (2019) and was also a high level panel speaker at the 10th World Urban Forum in Abu Dhabi (2020). Adil has worked as a consult analyst with BuroHappold on issues of city planning and regeneration, urban governance, and economic development – based in London and Riyadh.
He was also a research assistant for an LSE Kuwait Programme project on Promoting Private R&D Investment in Kuwait. His co-authored publications include a UN-Habitat sponsored report on land and natural resource tenure in Eastern and Southern Africa and an EPSRC-funded research project on Renewable Energy as an Underutilised Resource in Cities.
Provisional thesis title
Conflict Minerals, Globalization and Urbanization: Implications for Local Economic Development in Sub-Saharan Africa
Research Interests
- Economic Geography and African city-regions
- Local Economic Development
- Urban Planning and Governance
- Land and Natural Resource Management
- Globalization and Development Policy
Supervisors
Prof Simona Iammarino
Dr Richard Perkins
View Adil's CV.