User:SannaOjanpera

Sanna Ojanperä's research focuses on participation in knowledge economies in Sub-Saharan Africa and on the impacts these activities have on the society. More broadly, she is interested in understanding what development is and could be in today’s hyper-connected age.

Sanna's work in the Oxford Internet Institute is centered on the geographies and development impacts of knowledge economies in Sub-Saharan Africa. Together with Dr Mark Graham, she works on an ERC-funded GeoNet project which studies how new economic practices and processes are taking root in Sub-Saharan Africa as a result of changing connectivities. The project maps formal and informal types of participation in ‘knowledge economies’ in order to investigate why certain places have sustained their dominance, why others have become more central, and why some places, practices, and initiatives have declined.

Sanna is also a member of the multidisciplinary Connectivity, Inclusion, and Inequality Group of researchers, which aims to understand the differences that ICTs and changing connectivities make at the world's economic peripheries and critically consider what 'development' is, and should be, in a hyper-connected age.

Sanna earned a Master's Degree from American University's School of International Service (Washington, DC) in 2013. At SIS she studied international development, governance, and innovative research methods as an ASLA-Fulbright Fellow. Before joining OII, she worked with the Digital Engagement team of the World Bank Governance Global Practice, where she was involved in developing an evaluation framework for projects and initiatives that focus on digital engagement. Previously she also worked with the Inter-American Development Bank's Strategic Planning and Development Effectiveness Unit, where she worked as the quantitative researcher supporting the development of a strategic framework for the bank’s tourism sector.