Shona Macleod

Rights Lab Research Fellow in Forced Child Begging

Email: shona.macleod@nottingham.ac.uk

Dr Shona Macleod works as part of the Rights Lab’s Health and Communities Programme, on a large international project in partnership with Anti-Slavery International that is tackling forced child begging in Niger. Her work involves qualitative research to understand the societal and legal-institutional factors that underpin forced begging practices in traditional Qur’anic schools, collaborating closely with project partners. Previously, her PhD included three case studies targeting the practice of begging in Qur’anic schools in Senegal, and demonstrated the power of discourse to shape how issues are constructed as problems, influence how structures and interventions are organised and how they interact, and set the rules by which development actors engage with and are resisted by those they target. She also brings experience of working in NGOs in Senegal and the UK with a focus on child rights.