May 11, 2022

Saran Touré holds her Princeton Research Day award with Assistant University Librarian Peter Bae

The awards presentation for the 7th annual Princeton Research Day concluded with Saran Touré ’22 receiving the inaugural Princeton University Library (PUL) Award.

Peter Bae, assistant university librarian for scholarly collections services, presented the award to Touré based on her use of Library research and services. Her work re-examined the mechanisms behind the development of the natural resource curse in French West Africa.

“With the help of Bobray Bordelon, the economics librarian, I used the French Archival Statistical Commerce Yearbooks from the 1900s and the U.N. Country Database to create a novel dataset which calculates colonial resource dependence,” Touré explained. “I found evidence for resource dependence during a country’s post-independence period, as well as evidence for a negative relationship between higher resource dependence during colonialism and the 1995 literacy and primary school attendance rates.”

Bae was impressed by the interdisciplinary nature of Touré’s research and the primary sources and methods she implemented. “It seems to me that throughout her research process she fully utilized resources and services PUL provides,” Bae said.

To view Saran’s award-winning video explanation of her research, visit the Princeton Research Day video archive.

Published on May 11, 2022

Written by Brandon Johnson, Communications Specialist

Media Contact: Barbara Valenza, Director of Library Communications