Global Development, University of Reading, February
Publications
Michael Goodman published two papers in 2022 and 2023. The first is entitled “The High Priests of Global Development: Capitalism, Religion and the Political Economy of Sacrifice in a Celebrity-led Water Charity” with Filippo Menga in Development and Change. This paper analyse the interrelationship between capitalism and religion to interrogate the drivers of international development and to historically situate the work of celebrity-led water charities and the growing role of these ‘high priests’ of philanthropically-driven development.
The second is entitled “Collective memories, place-framing and the politics of imaginary futures in sustainability transitions and transformation” with Giuseppe Feola, Jaime Suzunaga and Jenny Soler and is in Geoforum. This paper analyzes place-framing in sustainability transitions and transformation by examining how the conflicting collective memories of a place and the framings of the future of this place interact and lead to the justification of particular forms of socio-material development, land use and sustainability of peri-urban spaces of a city in Colombia.
Graham Clarkson and Peter Dorward have a new publication based on their Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA) programme: Nsengiyumva, G. , Clarkson, G. , Gumucio, T. , Dorward, P. , Ingabire, C. (2022) Exploring the effects of a participatory climate services approach on smallholder decision-making in Rwanda using a gender lens. Gender, Technology and Development , 26 (3). pp. 544-563. ISSN: 0971-8524 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09718524.2022.2144102
Research news
Peter Dorward and Graham Clarkson’s E-PICSA project, funded as part of the GIZ I4AG fund, started in September 2022. E-PICSA is an agricultural extension and climate app designed to empower smallholder farmers to make better decisions for their individual farm and household contexts to improve yields, food security, incomes and resilience.
The specific goals are as follows:
- E-PICSA apps developed for farmers and intermediaries and easy to sustain for in-country partners.
- Sustainable, automated provision of location-specific and historical climate information and forecasts for the whole of Malawi and Zambia.
- 100 intermediaries from government and private sector trained in digital literacy and use of the E-PICSA apps.
- 10,000 farmers (of which at least 30% women) trained using E-PICSA and with improved access to locally relevant climate and weather information and decision-support tools, which they are using to improve production, income, and adaptation to climate change.
Reading hosting DSA2023
In anticipation of DSA2023, the Global Development Division hosted a workshop on Crisis in the Anthropocene.