Elisa Gambino

Elisa Gambino is Lecturer in Globalisation, Trade and Development at the Global Development Institute of the University of Manchester and Adjunct Researcher at the Centre of Asian Studies of the University of Ghana. She joined Manchester after completing a PhD in African Studies at the University of Edinburgh and holding the position of LSE Fellow in the International Politics of China at the International Relations department of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Elisa’s research explores the rise of South-South engagement, with a focus on the intersection between China’s outward economic engagement and Africa’s development trajectories. Her work places particular emphasis on the role of embeddedness in fostering firm internationalisation, focusing mainly on the trade, manufacturing, and infrastructure sectors. Elisa is currently completing a 3-year Hallsworth project titled “African hubs, Chinese trade, and global circulation”, which explores the development implications of Chinese private capital internationalisation for regional integration and industrialisation in West Africa.

Her research also examines how Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) shapes development outcomes, with particular attention to the role of taxation. She is the PI of the policy-oriented project “Taxation for Development (T4D)”. T4D is a collaborative project between the University of Manchester, the Ghana Revenue Authority and the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration which explores the contributions of foreign firms to domestic revenue mobilisation in Ghana.

Elisa is co-convenor of the Rising Powers Study Group of the Development Studies Association, co-founder and Secretary of the Italian Association of Africa-China Studies, and co-founder of the New South Working Group of the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes. She has published in leading academic journals, such as Review of International Political Economy and International Affairs, as well as undertaking consultancy projects in both the public and private sectors.