DSA Members' news

The Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) and the Multidimensional Poverty Peer Network (MPPN) held a Side Event during the SDG Summit at the 74th UN General Assembly, where 19 high-level speakers shared their experiences of using multidimensional poverty indices to lead progress in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Online anthropology collective Allegra Lab ran a four-day book forum exploring Ruben Andersson’s new book, No Go World – which explores why and how the world is being remapped into zones of danger and security – with three academics reviewing the book over three days, followed by Ruben’s response.

Adeel Malik has written a blog post about his new co-edited book, which uses newly available data to create a detailed picture of the nature, extent and implications of 'crony capitalism' in the Middle East.

Our recently completed DPhil student Felipe Roa-Clavijohas wonone of Colombia’s most prestigious social science prizes for his doctoral research examining negotiations in the agri-food sector in Colombia and the implications for food production and provisioning.

New research from Diana Mitlin et al, highlights the growing urban water crises across the global south. The research found that in 15 major cities in the global south, almost half of all households’ lack access to piped utility water,

New research by Gindo Tampubolon et al, analysing an innovative approach to improving cardiovascular care in rural Indonesia, has just been published in theJournal of Cardiology.

Researchers on the GDI’s FutureDAMS project attended and presented at the World Water Week in Stockholm in August. Also in attendance, was Phil Woodhouse presenting his work on Africa’s farmer-led irrigation revolution as part of the SAFI project.

Seth Schindler, along with Simin Fadaee and Dan Brockington, edited a special issue ofEnvironment & Societyfocussing on contemporary megaprojects. Additionally Seth recently became a ‘corresponding editor’ of theInternational Journal of Urban and Regional Research.

Dr Alessandra Mezzadri (SOAS) and Dr Kaustav Banerjee (AUD, Delhi) will be engaged with the UNU-WIDER agenda ‘Transforming informal work and livelihoods’ working at a project titled ‘The Afterlife of Industrial Work: From the Factory to the Informal Economy’ (October 2019- June 2020). The project focuses on migrant workers' livelihoods once they leave the garment factories of the Delhi metropolitan National Capital Region. It aims at tracing the long-term impact of garment work and the opportunities available to former workers once their industrial experience is over. The initial mapping for this project will focus on a cluster of garment factories located around the Delhi-Jaipur highway, and on the industrial hamlets like Kapashera.

The Migration Leadership Team's film Life on the Move, made with Positive Negatives, and particularly creative genius Osbert Parker, has been short-listed for two AHRC Media Awards, in the Social Media and Inspiration categories! Final Winners will be announced in November. This stop-motion animation tells the story of five migrants and refugees from the Horn of Africa. There is also a companion film that shows the innovative process by which the film was made.

The Migrants on the Margins project (Principle Investigator Michael Collyer at Sussex, with SOAS' Laura Hammond as co-Investigator) has been shortlisted for an award by Teach Secondary for the educational resources for curriculum impact. This award is given in recognition of resources “that will change the way a particular subject is taught and/or boost students’ progress in that subject.” The project team has been working with the Royal Geographical Society to develop teaching resources for secondary school students. The winner will be announced in October.

SOAS held a conversation eventfor researchers, funding bodies and research development staff from universities around the UK and globally to discuss Applying a Decolonial Lens to Research Structures, Norma and Practices in Higher Education Institutions. Much of the motivation for this event came from the increasing overlap between UK ODA policy and higher education research ('development research') and the challenges and issues that this has raised in relation to international collaborative research. You can read more about the event on the SOAS website. The presentations and discussions were live-streamed and can be viewed at any timevia Panopto(starts at minute 32). The event was also tweeted live under the hashtag#DecolonialHE, which can be followedon Twitter. A JISC email listserv has been set up to continue the conversation and to link funders, researchers and research offices together across the UK and globally. The list homepage is available via this web link. The email address for the list is DECOLONIALHE(AT)JISCMAIL.AC.UK and new members can join via this link.

Rice and Fish Curry

The documentary produced by Professor Naila Kabeer and directed by Gautam Bose, about a project intended to help some of its poorest families in West Bengal to move out of extreme poverty onto more sustainable livelihood trajectories. This film spoke to six of these women in 2007 when they were just joining the project. It returned in 2018, a decade later, to find out to what extent the project had fulfilled its promise.

Opening up the party system of Bolivia

After decades of political party-system stability in Bolivia, the three main parties rapidly shed support as new parties emerged to take their place. Professor Jean-Paul Faguet discusses why this happened, and how Bolivia’s experience acts as a cautionary tale for established parties in European democracies.

Professor Robert Wade on Trump and the rise of the "Strongman"

Professor Robert Wade was interviewed by New Zealand broadcaster, Kim Hill, for her magazine programme Saturday Morning. In the interview, Professor Wade is asked about his thoughts on the rise of authoritarianism, the effect of AI on the labour markets, and the grievances feeding populism.

Professor Kathy Hochstetler on the Amazon fires

In this article for Foreign Policy, Professor Kathy Hochstetler looks back to the Amazon fires in 1989 and questions what has been done (and undone) since then to protect world’s largest rainforest.

BBC News article “Sudan crisis: The ruthless mercenaries who run
the country for gold” by Alex de Waal.

Knowledge for disrupting risk in Freetown- MSc ESD and SLURC collaborative outputs launched online

We are happy to share the outputs produced by the co-learning alliance between SLURC and the Practice Module of the MSc in Environment and Sustainable Development fieldwork in the form of thematic policy briefs and videos.

DPU welcomes new lecturer Dr Alexandra Panman
We are delighted to welcome Dr Alexandra Panman to the DPU. Alexandra will teach the module ‘An Introduction to Public Economics and Public Policy’, part of the MSc Urban Economic Development

Revealing politics in Valparaiso’s regeneration
Rodrigo Caimanque explores how multiscalar governance is produced to understand urban changes in a Chilean case study

8th DPU60th Anniversary PhD scholarship awarded to Mariajosé Nieto
Mariajosé Nieto is an economist by training and intends to study how informal and grass-roots transport alternatives are reconfiguring the mobility of people living in urban areas of Bogotá marked by limited coverage of public transport.

Opinion

To achieve a truly ‘Global Britain’ we need to take international research policy partnerships seriously
James Georgalakis

Transformative participatory impact investing: The Buen Vivir Fund
Grace Lyn Higdon

Africa responds to the Inclusive Framework’s digital tax agenda
Martin Hearson

Community engagement and tackling antimicrobial resistance
Ayako Ebata.

CIDT leads on regional forest and climate change forum in SE Asia and the Pacific

As part of its role as a technical partner on the EU funded SE Asia Forest Policy project, CIDT is now leading the preparation of a regional forest and climate change policy forum. This Forest Governance Forum (FGF) will be held in Jakarta, Indonesia in February 2020.

Regional strategic development for pan-African network of forest monitoring organisations

With the financial and technical support of the EU funded CV4C project managed by CIDT, the project partner, Field Legality Advisory Group (FLAG) successfully organised a regional strategic development workshop for the Pan African independent forest monitoring network (PA-OI). The workshop in Kribi, Cameroon- from 21-26 July 2019.

Workshop in Nepal maps areas for climate change action

On 4th August 2019, CIDT’s Des Mahony facilitated a stakeholder consultation on behalf of the NDC Partnership focused on identifying activities and projects to support key national climate and development goals.

CIDT undertakes midline study on girl’s education project in Zimbabwe

CIDT’s Richard Nyirenda has completed two weeks of field work in Zimbabwe; conducting data collection as part of a midline qualitative study of a girls’ education project. The project is implemented by CAMFED (Campaign for Female Education) and operates in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Tanzania.

Research seeds ‘transformative’ initiative in southern Africa

Research led by Nicola Yeates is behind a regional monitoring system for economic and human development now being rolled out across 16 southern African countries. Read more…

Research, but not as we know it

The Tate Exchange event that brings together arts, academia and activism. Read more…

DSA2019: The refugees the policymakers forgot

In a taster blog for her presentation on the Early Career Research Panel at DSA2019, Dr Sameen Zafar draws attention to the needs of elder refugees. Read more…

‘We want to hear from all researchers with an interest in gender’

Lorena Lombardozzi explains the rationale behind the launch of IKD’s new interdisciplinary Gender and Social Policy network. Read more…

Futurelearn deal will open up many new opportunities for India’s learners

The OU-founded social learning platform has announced a collaboration with a leading Asian online education platform. Read more...

Spotting clues to globalisation… in Renaissance paintings

Senior lecturer in Art History Leah Clark takes another look at the supposed products of a purely Western culture. Read more…

‘Pathbreaking’ study of International Health Worker Migration and Recruitment

Nicola Yeates’ new research monograph on the global governance, politics and policy of global health worker migration and social justice, the first comprehensive study of its kind, is published. Read more…

Financialisation: can we agree what it is? And should we?

Pauline Gleadle reports on the debate at the recent IKD workshop on financialisation. Read more…

Diverse group joins the experts to explore Innovation for Development in a new societal era

Theo Papaioannou blogs on the International Development Summer Course in Lisbon. Read more…

Fighting antimicrobial resistance in low- and middle-income settings

Koula Charitonos outlines a project to understand how laboratory professionals can be supported to learn about AMR on the job. Read more…

NRI staff have been active as members of the independent evaluation team for the DFID-funded ‘Partnerships for Forests’ programme. The broader programme aims at catalysing investments in which the private sector, public sector and communities can achieve shared value from sustainable forests and land use. The evaluation team has been conducting studies to inform programme strategy, as well as broader policy-making on forest investments. An NRI news story gives more details and provides links to three Thematic Studies, a synthesis report on Catalysing Private Sector Investment in Sustainable Forestry and Land Use, and a Briefing Paper.

In May, SIID hosted a number of events on the theme of decolonisation:

SIID PGR Conference & Annual Lecture

Earlier in May we welcomed over 30 students attending the SIID Annual Postgraduate Conference. This event was organised by MA/MSc and PhD students from the University of Sheffield and was attended by postgraduates studying at Universities in Tanzania, China, Norway, Portugal, UK, Sweden, Germany and Hungary. In it’s 10th year, the topic of the conference was ‘Decolonising Development? Challenges, Innovations and Practices.’ This event coincided with the SIID Annual Lecture and we were delighted to welcome Professor Uma Kothari to deliver a lecture on: "Decolonising Knowledge and Forging Solidarity: Disrupting colonial representations, narratives and imaginaries". More details can be found on the SIID website.

Research Ethics: Developing Best Practice for Researching in the Global South

More than 40 researchers at different career stages attended this two day workshop at the University of Sheffield over 20th - 21st May. The workshop consisted of eight facilitated break-out sessions for group work. A range of topics were discussed and part of the workshop was recorded as material will be edited for teaching purposes. If you are interested in hearing more please get in contact with the workshop organizer Dr Daniel Hammett. More details on the SIID website as well.

The International Development Department is delighted to share the news that a team led by Professor Nic Cheeseman has been awarded the prize for Outstanding International Impact by the ESRC. Please read more here.