Dr Layla Zaglul Ruiz
Dr Layla Zaglul Ruiz is a Canning House Research Fellow at the Latin America and Caribbean Center at the London School of Economics. Previously, she was a Research Fellow in the department of Anthropology (School of Global Studies), where she focused on analysing global capitalism and ethical trade from an anthropological perspective.
Layla's story
Through postdoctoral research with the Sussex Sustainability Research Programme (SSRP), she has established international partnerships in her home country, Costa Rica, which have been fundamental in developing her research ambitions.
Research with SSRP
Layla started working in an SSRP project with principal investigator Dr Peter Luetchford (School of Global Studies), back in 2020. After unsuccessful applications to big grants, a colleague from the History department suggested applying to the Joint Call International Development Challenge Fund (IDCF) and SSRP. Receiving this seed grant allowed Layla to conduct fieldwork in coffee and banana farms in Costa Rica, to investigate how the quality standards of these global commodities impact the livelihoods of producers. The Covid-19 pandemic put the data collection for this project on hold for 18 months, but support from SSRP and flexibility on the use of funds and the timeline of the project allowed Layla to continue her fieldwork.
SSRP was open to the ideas that we presented. They were very flexible with the changes we had to do to our research because of Covid.”
After a long wait, Layla travelled to Costa Rica and directly witnessed the impacts of the pandemic on coffee producers, gaining insights on an emerging trend around the promotion of ‘Direct Trade’ between producers and distributors in the Global North. This laid the foundations for a new project, 'Supporting social, environmental and economic sustainability in the Costa Rican coffee industry', funded by the Higher Education Innovation Funds (HEIF) and sponsored by SSRP.
Partnerships
The conception of the latter project could have not been possible without establishing partnerships with local coffee cooperatives and with Icafe, Instituto del Café de Costa Rica, a public institution charged with supporting and regulating Costa Rica’s coffee industry. Now, recent funding from the joint HEIF-SSRP call will allow Layla to strengthen those relationships by improving the communication between Icafe and small-scale producers. Together with Icafe, Layla and her team are currently exploring other sources of funding that would consolidate a long-term collaboration.
Interdisciplinary networks
The interdisciplinary nature of SSRP means that networking events are a key element for the success of the programme. In March 2022, SSRP organised a meeting with the leads of 17 new seed projects, which allowed Layla and other early career researchers to connect with peers with similar research interests:
Attending the SSRP welcome meeting for new seed projects was really helpful to meet colleagues from other disciplines and schools (e.g. business school, natural sciences, etc.) with whom I can picture myself working together. I wish there will be more opportunities like this.”