Margaret Satya Rose is a lawyer practicing in the Caribbean since 1995 and specialising in public procurement law.

She holds an undergraduate degree in law (LLB) and an LLM in Corporate Commercial Law from the University of the West Indies (UWI) and is currently Principal Consultant at the Procurement Innovation and Leadership Lab, and Lecturer on the MSc in Procurement Management at the Mona School of Business, University of the West Indies.

Margaret has also held board memberships in both the public and private sector, and has worked on World Bank, UNODC and IDB funded projects relating to public procurement research, legislative reform, training, and capacity-building in the Caribbean. She is also the Co-Founder and former Executive Director of the Caribbean Procurement Institute (2006-2017).

She is currently studying for the University of Bath Institute for Policy Research (IPR) Professional Doctorate in Policy Research and Practice (DPRP) and spoke to us about her career and experience on the programme so far.

Choosing the IPR

I have been involved in public procurement reform advocacy and professional capacity building for quite some time and I had identified a real demand for rigorous research to be produced with a Global South lens.

I had intended to do my PhD at another institution, specifically in the domain of public procurement law, but I came across Bath and the IPR Professional Doctorate in Policy Research and Practice (DPRP). I was attracted to the accessibility of the programme as a working professional and mother.

Developing a unique perspective

I was surprised to learn there was no law or philosophy department at the University of Bath with which I could liaise. At first, I felt like a duck out of water trying to understand this new world of social science research methods, but this became my biggest fortune.

Through the DPRP, I learned about the scepticism with which legal research is often received in scientific spaces, relegated to the annals of non-empirical, normative enquiry. I set off on a path to disprove this understanding of legal research methods and found myself ending up somewhere in between.

With the careful guidance of my research supervisor relating to causality in social science research and the embrace of interdisciplinary dialogues at the IPR, I am developing what I think is a unique perspective and set of skills for socio-legal enquiry. I could not have gotten here if I had continued with the mono-disciplinary focus of the law.

I have found the IPR to be very facilitating of, while providing important restraints for, innovative research approaches. I have also been connected to some of the leading thinkers at the intersection of complexity and social sciences and this has been invaluable to stretching my thinking.

Looking ahead

Recently, I have become very activated by ideas and discourses around multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity, combined with the demand for new epistemological approaches to address ‘wicked problems.’ I am currently working on a metatheoretical governance analysis of the COVID-19 PPE procurement crisis.

Looking ahead I am highly motivated to continue to deepen my understanding of the epistemological challenges involved in integrating empirical research into complex social realities with normative frameworks for addressing societal problems ethically.