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Frances Cossar is studying for a DPhil in International Development. She is a member of Christians in Academia and co-convener of Developing a Christian Mind's Social Sciences Stream.

Rob Heimburger sat down with her to hear about her studies and her faith.

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Coming to Oxford to study

Rob Heimburger: What brought you to Oxford to study?

Frances Cossar: I came here to do a doctorate in international development. I was working at a research institute and thoroughly enjoying the work, but to take more responsibility or leadership, you have to have a PhD. I was with the World Bank with their development economics research group, and then I was with the International Food Policy Research Institute, working on their Ghana programme in agricultural development. I liked that they were focused on building up capacity in country. They were very intentional in research that would feed into the international policy cycle as well as building capacity within the government.

RH: So, that got you connected to agriculture and Ghana?

FC: Yes. I love the topic of agriculture and Ghana. If you’re thinking about poverty in Africa, agriculture is where it comes together. That’s where people get their incomes, and rural society is structured around agriculture.

RH: Did the interest in poverty in Africa come first?

FC: As an undergrad, I went on a mission trip to South Africa with Tearfund and realized everyone else on the team was very useful as doctors and nurses and social workers. I was doing a degree in maths and economics, and I couldn’t immediately help, but I started seeing how my studies fit with government, policy, and systems. I went to Rwanda for two years to work in the ministry of finance. Before the PhD, I had a broad overview of the components that make up development policy, between a national government, the World Bank, and a research institute, and found the place I want to fit, the research institute.

I was at the World Bank, and I had done the two-year junior associate programme. I had a place to come to Oxford for the MPhil in economics. I felt the Lord was calling me not to do that. I prayed and looked for jobs. I had no right to live in Washington, DC, but I had put down roots there and wanted to love and serve that place longer. As a Christian, I don't think it's always helpful to change community every couple of years, in terms of community, letting people see you grow, and serving a church and a community. I ended up in a wonderful job.

RH: How has the doctorate been?

FC: Doing a PhD has been wonderful, like taking a breath, having a space to think about my own research, how do I want to do my research. Will it be primary data collection or quantitative analysis of other people’s data sets? And it’s been wonderful to have time for all the things we’ve talked about in Developing a Christian Mind and Christians in Academia. Up until coming here, work and faith have been somewhat separate. There’s always been an underlying motivation that God cares for the poor and wants to seek justice and speak up for the poor, but I’ve had a chance to seek further integration.

RH: Where are you from originally?

FC: I grew up in Glasgow, and I studied in London for my undergraduate at LSE and a master’s at SOAS.

RH: How did you come to faith?

FC: We grew up going to church, a lovely Church of Scotland church which my parents are still a part of. I went to Christian summer camps and came to faith at twelve there. It’s incredible that God has kept me through all those teenage years. University is often the time that it becomes personal, and you’re deciding how you want to live life.

RH: Was God’s concern for the poor and for justice always clear to you?

FC: Yes. At university, I was involved with Tearfund, and they helped a lot. My concern for development and the poor was already there, but they helped to give words to it, showing biblically that God had a heart for it. This fit it in with an evolving faith as I thought about the importance of personal faith and sharing our faith with others. Is faith just doing good works and works for the poor? It’s not just doing good works, it’s about Jesus and the good news of the cross. In that season of university, it was good fitting things together.

Economics as relational

RH: Could you tell me more about your doctoral work in Ghana and Ethiopia? What’s the project?

FC: I’m looking at the use of agricultural machinery, mostly tractors, and the impact they have had on a farming community, on the way that people share labour and land, and on institutions, how each is changed by modern technology.

RH: What changes have you found?

FC: One issue is sustainability. They’ve been using tractors since the 60s or 70s but more in the last ten or fifteen years. Some experts will say it’s the wrong technology. The soil utility is going down, and they get less from their soil. It’s something to do with the use of tractors. They think, that’s not going to be our problem, that’s going to be our children’s problem. That’s the issue of sustainability, long-term need versus short-term need. If you’re struggling to have food to eat, it’s hard to argue that you should change technology or do something that’s more expensive.

RH: That’s what the tractors promise, higher productivity? Ploughing more land, more quickly?

FC: Exactly. When you’re in areas where there’s not a lot of labour to do the work, it’s quick and easy.

RH: How do tractors work in the local economics?

FC: This is something that’s been helpful to think about at Developing a Christian Mind (DCM). Neoclassical economic theory assumes that people are self-interested. If you just look at that theory, you wouldn’t expect farmers to be using tractors because they’re very expensive and they don’t have access to credit. Farmers only use them for four to six weeks of the year. Because of the way land is distributed, you will have relatively small land areas so it doesn’t justify owning tractors for your own land. It would have to be shared.

RH: Is that what people do?

FC: Yes. They’re importing cheap machinery, say from Europe, second-hand, and then there’s a hiring market going on. You see the existing family relationships, village, and ties are helping that market work better. People aren’t just individuals. If you’re just looking at people as individuals, then you’re not going to be able to understand how this hiring market works.

RH: So, relationships already exist.

FC: Yes. If I’m a farmer, I have a cousin who’s a couple of villages over who has a tractor and I call him first to make sure I get my services on time. Therefore, the rest of the village benefits. Chiefs have bought tractors to make sure their villages get service on time. I’m bringing that to economic analysis, to see these networks and relationships that are pre-existing to tractor use but facilitate access to tractors, which may be good or bad.

Problems and solutions in international development

RH: You said time in Oxford has given you more space to connect faith and work, faith and study. What’s been helpful?

FC: It’s been Developing a Christian Mind and Christians in Academia.

RH: Don’t say that because that’s the right answer for the interview!

FC: No, it has. A year ago, when I joined Christians in Academia, I was so excited about it. I was very involved in St Ebbe’s, and I am still very involved, and it’s a lovely church. But equally, there are a lot of very smart people in my department. Especially in development, people are motivated by wanting to make the world better, and they are thinking it through, not only in their own work, but in a normative stance.

RH: That seems like a great thing to be around and affirm.

FC: Yes, I see a lot of common ground, but I wanted to have a space to talk and think about my Christian motivations for my work. I have some very good friends in my course, but I can’t talk to them in the same way. What is God calling us to? Equally, people in church might not have patience for the same kind of depth of thought.

RH: So, that was some of the motivation for getting involved with Christians in Academia and DCM?

FC: Yes. In his talk at DCM, Michael Lloyd said something said that was particularly helpful about Marxism. He mentioned that a Christian economist and a Marxist would often have a similar diagnosis of the problem, seeing how class and systems work, with one class pushing down another class. With friends in my department, we often see things in the same way, but then our departure comes. Their response is to organize and mobilize the proletariat. It was affirming to hear Lloyd identify what we share and then say that the point of departure is where redemption comes from, from a sovereign God who is redeeming the world, though we don’t see him. We trust in him. In my department, there’s more of a feeling that we need to fix the problem.

RH: So, you might diagnose structures of oppression, but what do you do next?

FC: You work to transform them from within or see change as incremental. I’d rather not see things as black and white. There are good things in a broken system, and it’s not right to throw the whole system out. This is stuff I’ve thought about before, especially in Rwanda. People come to development and can be very idealistic, thinking “I’m going to change the world,” and they can be very dejected when they realize they can’t. The unique place of Christians is to say yes, it’s frustrating, but there’s a bigger God who’s redeeming the world. This allows us to sit in that place of working hard to make things better but not burning out and being overly frustrated, but continually trusting that God is building the bigger picture.

The humble researcher

RH: Has anything else been helpful from Christians in Academia?

FC: The stuff about character in Christians in Academia. I’ve been sending readings to other friends. ‘This stuff about humility is really great!’ Some of these things I’ve thought about before, but it’s really interesting reading and talking with people and hearing different perspectives on things.

RH: Humility is a hard thing to come by in the university if you’re pursuing a career.

FC: Yes. It’s a freeing thing. In the research institute I worked in, people would come from PhDs and were doing research. You see that the good researchers are the ones who are very open, open with their data and open with flaws in their research, or open to criticism. That is a form of humility. The others may not be bad researchers, but they guard their research and guard their data and don’t want to share it. Research is a team project. It’s not an individual endeavour. So, how do I work with people? Relationships are important, at the centre of most things that we do.

RH: It’s related to what you were talking about with tractor hiring. Things go well in research if we’re sharing and collaborating, seeing beyond the progress of our own career.

FC: Exactly. It’s not a zero-sum game. If I do well, it doesn’t mean that they’re not going to do well. We can both do good work.

Challenges as a postgrad

RH: Are there challenges for loving God as a postgrad?

FC: This week, I got so wrapped up in a paper that it got me so stressed out. Me and this paper were in battle. It won. I had to submit it for a deadline before it was ready, but I had to submit it. There’s an idol in there somewhere. I need to learn to let go of it and give up on perfectionism.

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