Is it time to give municipal socialism a chance?
by Seth Schindler, Professor of Urban Politics and Development
Every autumn the University of Manchester slowly awakes from hibernation and lumbers into the new academic year. This awakening is accompanied by the springtime optimism of new beginnings, even as darkness descends on the city in the afternoons. Fresh-faced students imagine the endless possibilities that await their future selves as they explore the campus and city. This should be a time of great anticipation and excitement, yet students increasingly suffer from anxiety because they will most likely graduate with debt and few job prospects.
The role of hope in transforming places of despair into resilient spaces
On 21st October 2025, we held the third in a series of communities of practice designed to support practitioners and academics in navigating a turbulent world and building resilience in difficult times. This month, we focused on the value of hope in tackling problems that may feel insurmountable, as well as the ways we can nurture and maintain hope in the longer term.
As in previous sessions, Natalie Cunningham, Senior Lecturer in Leadership for Development at GDI, facilitated the discussion alongside Louisa Hann, Research Communications Officer. Natalie started the session by discussing the meaning of hope and sharing academic literature on the topic.
Kicking off the semester with the GDI Human Resource Management students
by Lujia Feng, Programme Director, MSc Human Resource Management (International Development)
At the start of this semester, we kicked off the year with something a little different, a learning session and social event for MSc Human Resource Management (International Development) students on Friday, 17 October 2025.
Earth observation data for the Global South: democratizing access or deepening inequalities?
By Mina Wang, intern with the Just Earth Observation for Conservation (JEOC) project
Earth observation (EO) has long been used for environmental monitoring, but has become increasingly integral in recent years — not least in the Global South, where the promise of the bird’s eye view has been touted as a way to democratize access to environmental information and decision-support across the continents. Indeed, projects like the Guinea Land Cover Mapping initiative and the NASA-led SERVIR-Mekong initiative for reservoir and flood monitoring have shown how EO can effectively be used to support conservation goals and climate resilience. Similar to many other sectors, however, EO has experienced significant commercialization over the last decade or so: between 2014 and 2022, the share of commercial satellites amidst over 1,000 operational EO missions rose from just 10% to an estimated 71%. And the global EO industry is far from being leaderless: in 2024, companies based in the US and Europe alone accounted for over 85% of the market share.
Africa: Peace and development in the age of transactional geopolitics
By Teklehaymanot Weldemichel and Smith Ouma
The African Union has long promoted the slogan “African solutions to African problems”. Yet recent developments across the continent suggest that this proclamation is increasingly hollow.
Join us for Transformation Lab Week 2025
What does it take to turn toxic organisations into thriving organisations?
On 16th September 2025, we held the second communities of practice in a series exploring the complexities of developing and maintaining resilience within the development space. Natalie Cunningham, Senior Lecturer in Leadership for Development at GDI, facilitated the sessions alongside Louisa Hann, Research Communications Officer, and we were joined by a diverse group of academics and practitioners.
We made poverty history. So why are we still here?
It’s been 20 years since the huge phenomenon of Make Poverty History. Nearly one-quarter of a million people marched the streets of Edinburgh. More than three billion worldwide watched Live 8. And over 7 million of us wore white wristbands in solidarity, calling on rich nations to end poverty globally, once and for all.
Three Gains, Three Failures: A Reflection on the 2022 Jîna Uprising in Iran
by Dilek Celebi, PhD Researcher in GDI
On 16 September 2022, a young woman’s murder shook the world. Jîna Amini – a Kurdish-Iranian woman known to the state as Mahsa Amini – journeyed from her hometown of Saqqez (in Kurdistan province) to Tehran. Accused of violating the regime’s compulsory veiling rule, she was beaten by morality police, fell into a coma, and died.
Call for alumni contributions: How are development careers evolving in a volatile decade?
The past few years have brought a great deal of social, political, and economic turbulence across much of the world. From intensifying climate breakdown to growing geopolitical uncertainty, GDI academics have been working hard to conceptualise future threats and grapple with the implications of what has been termed the ‘polycrisis’. Recent cuts to aid programmes, for example, have sparked lively discussions about how we can transform creaking development paradigms, using the crisis to create more just, equitable, and sustainable frameworks through which to pursue progress.