NALSU NEWS: Dr Laura Alfers of NALSU (the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit) has been appointed International Coordinator of Women in Informal Employment: Globalising & Organising (WIEGO) from 1 January 2025.
Laura joined WIEGO in 2009 to support the Social Protection Programme, becoming its Director in 2017. Laura has worked on bridging the grassroots realities of workers in informal employment with global research, advocacy, and policy narratives and directions. She brought new talent into the Social Protection Programme, carving out WIEGO’s niche in social protection, workers’ health and childcare, and ensuring that the concerns of workers in the informal economy were heard, including in the development community and at policy and representative bodies, nationally, regionally, and internationally.
Outgoing WIEGO International Coordinator Dr Sally Roever said: "I have full confidence in Laura’s ability to lead WIEGO into the future and am so excited about the perspective and fresh energy she will bring. Over the years we have worked together, I have been struck by Laura’s sharp and strategic thinking. She has consistently demonstrated the ability to plan and deliver in ways that shift the ground in key policy spaces, with a spirit of collaboration and grounded knowledge of the informal economy."
Laura holds a PhD in Development Studies from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa, as well as an MPhil in Development Studies from Cambridge University. Her scholarly work has been featured in prominent international journals like the "International Social Security Review," "Global Social Policy," and "Environment and Urbanization." She is based in Makhanda, South Africa, where she is a Research Associate at the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit at Rhodes University.
NALSU congratulates Laura on this wonderful achievement!
ABOUT WIEGO: WIEGO is a global network focused on empowering informal workers and securing informal livelihoods. Its stated mission is to improve the status of the working poor, especially women, in the informal economy through increased organisation and representation, research, and policy reform. This requires addressing the low earnings, high risks, and adverse working environments and conditions associated with informal work worldwide. WIEGO's members include membership-based worker organisations of workers, researchers, and development professionals.
MORE: https://www.wiego.org/
ABOUT NALSU: Based in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) is engaged in policy, research, and workers' education, has a democratic, non-sectarian, non-aligned, and pluralist practice, and active relations with a range of advocacy, labour, and research organisations. We draw strength from our location in a province where the legacy of apartheid and the cheap labour system, and post-apartheid contradictions, are keenly felt. We are named in honour of Dr Neil Hudson Aggett, a union organiser and medical doctor who died in 1982 in an apartheid jail after enduring brutality and torture.
MORE: http://www.ru.ac.za/nalsu