Mariam Zaqout

Profile

I am a final year  PhD researcher based at the School of Civil Engineering. I come from Palestine where I obtained a BSc degree in Environmental Engineering from the Islamic University of Gaza, Palestine. Later, I worked for two years in consulting companies there concerned with environmental studies. During my BSc, I spent one academic year at the University of L’Aquila, Italy as part of the Erasmus Mundus Scholarship Programme. In 2017, I received the Chevening Scholarship to study MSc of Water, Sanitation and Health Engineering at the University of Leeds. During my MSc, I became interested on sanitation challenges in Bangladesh, where I received the Mathew Treadgold Award to conduct a qualitative study across three cities investigating the livelihoods of sanitation workers. 

My PhD research

Funded by the School of Civil Engineering/Phil Dolan Scholarship, my research focuses on the political economy of sanitation services and specifically the incentives of sanitation stakeholders to fund/allocate resources across the various sanitation services. The research examines public services literature and how the economic and institutional characteristics of these services influence the incentives of the involved stakeholders to fund it. It then reflects on the characteristics of sanitation various services and the created incentives against the stakeholders. The research eventually aims to challenge these incentives in a given context in order to plan for a sustainable allocation of funds across the various sanitation services. My PhD thesis uses 4 diverse case studies namely:

• Development Banks loans in Bangladesh.
• Sanergy Enterprise in Nairobi, Kenya 
• State provision in Cape Town, South Africa
• External aid in the Gaza Strip, Palestine

Research interests

Interdisciplinary research that addresses technocratic  water and sanitation solutions with an appreciation for the governance challenges associated with it and the following are my current focus

• Providing decent and sustainable sanitation jobs in South Asia
• The political economy of sanitation services and specifically the incentives of sanitation stakeholders to fund/allocate resources across the various sanitation services, 
• Funding sustainability in water and sanitation services 

Qualifications

• 2018 MSc of Water, Sanitation and Health Engineering, University of Leeds, UK
• 2016 BSc of Environmental Engineering, Islamic University of Gaza, Palestine

Research groups and institutes

• Water, Public Health and Environmental Engineering