Learning from the World of Wedgwood: Human Resource Management webinar
GDI’s Human Resource Management course aims to equip learners with a robust theoretical framework for careers in HRM and at the same time to provide students with an opportunity to gain insights into practice-focused HRM across a wide range of management contexts and sectors. The MSc HRM Enhancement Programme has been developed over five years to offer closer student engagement with a wide range of organisational contexts in the field of HR practice. This year, due to the impact of Covid-19, alternative plans have been made for the enhancement programme to invite guest lecturers from different organisations to engage on matters of HR Practice with HRM students through a series of webinars. read more…
New research forecasts impending environmental disaster associated with the disposal of menstrual products in India
Rising disposable income, intensive product marketing and NGO encouragement has seen more women in India adopting modern pads and tampons instead of traditional menstrual management methods. But this has resulted in adverse effects on environment and waste management systems, currently reaching 100,000 tons of waste per year, according to new research by Mariana Lopez.
India is home to 20% of the world’s menstruating women. While only 58% use menstrual products, the result is over 12 billion pads discarded in India annually. Modern, non-biodegradable products – which are 90% plastic – are now found in water supplies, piled on dumpsites, or left to be removed by waste pickers who are then exposed to diseases. read more…
Gender and migration in the Global South – intersectional reflections on International Women’s Day
Dr Matthew Walsham, Research Associate, Global Development Institute and Dr Tanja Bastia, Reader, Global Development Institute
In this blog, we mark this year’s International Women’s Day by reflecting on the heavy toll that Covid-19 has had on migrants across the world and how the pandemic has highlighted and exacerbated the gendered inequalities that many migrant women face. We draw on our ongoing research to focus particularly on the links between gender, intersectionality and migration in South-South migration and also show how knowledge of these issues can be essential in understanding wider migration dynamics.
In our work on gender and migration, we explore how gender relations shape – and are shaped by – the experiences of migrant women, migrant men and their families at both origin and destination. These relations do not function in isolation and their intersection with other categories of disadvantage and difference – such as race, ethnicity, age, class, disability and sexuality – usually have a profound effect on migrant’s decisions, experiences and outcomes. read more…
MSc Human Resource Management Enhancement Programme Webinar Hermes Airport Project, Cyprus
GDI offers a range of taught master’s programmes focusing on human resource management, organisational change, human resource development and managing and delivering development projects.
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 to provide students with an opportunity to gain insights into practice-focused human resource practice across a wide range of management contexts and sectors.
The course has been developed to offer student engagement with a wide range of organisational contexts in the field of HR practice, with a focus on the professional, cultural and social dimensions of their experience. This engagement is achieved through a two-semester Enhancement Programme of organisation-based experiential learning experiences, including residential and day field visits to public and private sector organisations, complemented by visits to the university by experienced, organization-based HR practitioners. read more…
Should we expect a post-Covid-19 social protection epiphany in Latin America?
Armando Barrientos, Emeritus Professor of Poverty and Social Justice, Global Development Institute
Social protection has played a leading role in government responses to Covid-19. Public programmes providing income and in-kind transfers to vulnerable population groups have been strengthened and enhanced to address the effects of the pandemic.
In low and middle income countries, the expansion of social assistance provided governments with a ready-made platform to reach and support low income groups. Social assistance infrastructure – social registries, implementation agencies, and local community links – facilitated fast and effective responses to the crisis. In addition to existing conditional income transfers and social pensions, several governments in Latin America implemented temporary income transfer programmes to support workers in informal employment. In high income countries, governments mobilised support for furloughed workers and the unemployed while social assistance transfers plugged the gaps left by welfare state retrenchment. read more…
Migrant lives: living between aspirational worlds in times of (in)security and immobility
We have just launched a new master’s course on International Development: Migration, Mobility and Displacement. To coincide with this and to give students a greater idea about the course we will be sharing a series of blogs from members of our Migration, Refugees and Asylum research group.
The first blog explores Prof Tanja Müller’s Moving the goalposts of citizenship? German business sector engagement and refugee integration project.
Mobility is a core human endeavour which is often forgotten, but the last decade has in different ways put the limelight on movements but also immobilities. There was the visible movement of refugees from Syria that in particular in 2015 put people’s flight from devastation and their aspiration for a better future into the daily news for a while. Since February 2020, immobility has become a key news item, as Covid-19 has resulted in multiple external and internal travel restrictions, impacting the lives of internal and externals migrants in multiple ways. read more…
Webinar: an introduction to the African Cities Research Consortium
Catch up with our webinar which introduced the African Cities Research Consortium (ACRC) and outlined how the ACRC and its international partners is planning to tackle complex, political and systemic problems in some of Africa’s fastest-growing urban areas.
ACRC has been awarded a contract of £32 million from the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) over the next 6 years. Building on the political settlements analysis established by the Effective States and Inclusive Development research centre, ARCR will adopt a city as systems approach to addressing complex urban problems. Through engaged action research we aim to catalyse progress for disadvantaged communities in a number of focus cities and beyond. read more…
The challenges and opportunities of researching migration in a pandemic
Malte Skov and Andreina Carrillo Espinoza, PhD researchers, Global Development Institute
The global outbreak of the novel Covid-19 virus has meant that travel restrictions, as well as national, regional, and local lockdowns across the globe, pose major limitations on conducting research in the field. Human contact has been unprecedently restricted, which has resulted in new practical and ethical challenges for many researchers, not least within the field of migration.
To explore the methodological impacts of these new challenges, the Research Group on Migration, Refugees and Asylum hosted an online workshop on 13 November 2020, which brought together a group of Academics working with migration in different contexts and locations. read more…
Chronic poverty and inequality in Uganda. The last mile?
Gindo Tampubolon, Lecturer in Poverty, Global Development Institute
Global development aims to eradicate poverty in this decade. The task, according to the latest figure from the Uganda Bureau of Statistics, involves 21.4 per cent of Ugandans living in poverty. And according to the World Bank (Poverty Assessment Report 2016), nine out of ten poor people live in rural places and two-thirds in the North and Eastern regions. But success in this task is hindered by a lack of knowledge on why families stay poor or what predicts chronic poverty. Since the turn of the century, few studies have modelled chronic poverty and its key predictors, those focusing on the same families that are extremely poor in consecutive times of observations. Without such knowledge, a world without poverty will remain elusive. read more…
Just Give Money to the Poor: The Development Revolution from the Global South
In 2010 Joseph Hanlon, Armando Barrientos and David Hulme published ‘Just Give Money to the Poor: The Development Revolution from the Global South’. The book concisely summarises the evidence of the benefits of cash transfers. Its conclusion that both donors and governments should focus more on putting money in the hand of people living in poverty was influential at the time, and continues to attract plaudits ten years on. The following blog post by Armando Barrientos in 2010 summarises the key arguments: read more…