Global Development Institute Merit Awards
The Global Development Institute Merit Awards provide three full scholarships for academically excellent professionals studying a GDI campus-based master’s course commencing in September 2022. The scholarship covers the tuition fees, living expenses, flights to the UK and visa costs.
The Global Development Institute is where critical thinking meets social justice. Researchers at the Global Development Institute are addressing some of the biggest challenges the world faces, from inequality and the politics of development to globalisation. We strive to address specific problems and make an impact in the real world. Cutting-edge insights from our research are incorporated in our postgraduate teaching and many of our 10,000 alumni become development leaders. For the last 60 years, The University of Manchester has been at the forefront of Development Studies and The Global Development Institute continues to drive forward new ideas promoting sustainable development and social justice for all.
For the next academic year we’re able to offer three fully funded scholarships for resident citizens of Ghana, Kenya, Ethiopia or Uganda and have not previously studied outside Africa. read more…
New Handbook challenges dominant development paradigms
A new handbook, The Routledge Handbook on Global Development, co-edited by the Global Development Institute’s Nicola Banks, has been published. The volume shows how processes and experiences of development have influenced people’s lives in both positive and negative ways, drawing attention to structural inequality and disadvantage alongside potential opportunities for positive change. read more…
Leaving Some Behind? LGBTI Exclusion in Development
Jonathan Stephen, MSc student, Global Development Institute
This blog translates some of the key discussion points raised in my MSc Dissertation looking at LGBTI exclusion from development and, in particular, multilateral organisations. My research asked if development is ready ‘to come out’? I used the LGBTI Inclusion Index to evaluate the nature of LGBTI exclusion in development and the declaration to leave no one behind. Steered by this dilemma, the research uses the UNDP and World Bank’s publication of the LGBTI Inclusion Index to interrogate the quality and inclusive nature for LGBTI citizens to participate in the design and delivery and subsequently, feel the benefits of the index. read more…
When Covid-19 hits transnational urban lives: localisation and new solidarities
Tanja Müller, Professor of Political Sociology, Global Development Institute
Semhar (not her real name) lives in an urban neighbourhood in Nairobi. She had, by local standards, a fairly comfortable life. She and her partner and two children are urban refugees from Ethiopia with the correct papers to live and work in Nairobi. They always regarded their stay in Nairobi as temporary and waited for the opportunity to move on to the UK, either through formal resettlement or with help from relatives.
Semhar’s partner could not easily find work in Nairobi, so she became the family’s breadwinner with a qualified position. But then an opportunity arose for her partner to relocate to the UK, and they decided not to waste this chance but that he should go ahead. She would stay behind with the children and read more…
DSA Call for papers: Development Studies Association conference 6-8 July 2022
Academics from the Global Development Institute are helping to convene a number of panels at the annual Development Studies Association conference taking place 6-8 July 2022. This year’s conference adopts justice and equity as central normative lenses to explore just futures in an urbanising and mobile world, facing a climate and ecological crisis in a pandemic or post-pandemic context.
There is a call for papers for all panels at the DSA Conference; visit the DSA website for more information. The deadline for submitting papers is 11 March (extended deadline). read more…
Human Resource Management Enhancement Programme: Guest Lecture from the Morrinson Wealth Wellbeing
The University of Manchester’s Global Development Institute offers a range of taught master’s programmes focusing on human resource management (MSc HRM), organisational change (MSc OCD), human resource management and development by distance learning (MSc HRM&D [DL]) and managing and delivering development projects (MSc MIDP). read more…
Human Resource Management Enhancement Programme: Guest Lecture from the IBM
The MSc Human Resource Management programme aims to equip learners with a robust theoretical framework for careers in human resource management and, at the same time, provide students with an opportunity to gain insights into practice-focused human resource practice across a wide range of management contexts and sectors. read more…
Podcast: African cities and urban sustainability: A conversation with Shuaib Lwasa
Our latest podcast episode features Shuaib Lwasa, founder and director of the Urban Action Lab, in conversation with Seth Schindler. They reflect on COP26 in Glasgow, discuss how Africa can position itself as an innovator in climate solutions, and talk about urban development in African cities.
Shuaib Lwasa is professor of urban sustainability at Makerere University in Uganda. Having worked extensively on interdisciplinary research projects primarily focused on African cities, but also in South Asia, he established the Urban Action Lab in 2010.
Seth Schindler is senior lecturer in urban development and transformation at the Global Development Institute and co-research director of the African Cities Research Consortium.
The full transcript of this podcast is available here.
Measuring social injustice under climate shocks to persons with disability
Gindo Tampubolon, Lecturer in Poverty, Global Development Institute
In his treatise on justice, The Idea of Justice (2009), Amartya Sen explains that from Hobbes through Kant to Rawls, the theory of justice is concerned principally with the task of elucidating the hypothetical social contract or ideal social arrangement under which people of diverse world views and persuasions can live together with justice. Separately, from Smith through Marx to Sen, diverse ideas abound, which share concerns with comparing how people live under different institutions and social determinants. Those ideas can then be harnessed to eliminate injustices and enhance justice.
While Rawls’ theory of justice famously leaves the discussion of disability to a later stage, the situation of persons with disabilities animates Sen’s ideas of justice, building on concepts of functionings and capabilities. The achievement of functionings such as being nourished, or being mobile or appearing in public without shame, should be the basis for comparison of how people live instead of simply relying on the accumulation of incomes or wealth. In his example, “a person with severe disability cannot be judged to be more advantaged merely because she has a larger income than her able-bodied neighbour.” Harnessed with the concepts of functionings, I shall use these ideas to measure social injustice under intensifying climate shocks to persons with disability in Indonesia. read more…
Can celebrities influence how we understand poverty?
Isis Barei-Guyot, PhD researcher, Global Development Institute
Influencing development
The connection between celebrities and development may not be immediately apparent, but celebrity philanthropism has come to occupy an increasingly accepted role in the field of international development. For example, it is well known that Angelina Jolie was granted the status of Special Envoy for the United Nations. Events such as Band Aid and Comic Relief have normalised celebrities being the platform through which we become aware of humanitarian issues around the world. The media is an effective way to bring the suffering we cannot see or may not have experienced to our attention, and the increasing use of the word “influencer” to describe celebrities who use social media as a platform highlights the power celebrities and the media have to shape people’s behaviour, attitudes and choices, including when it comes to issues of development. read more…