GDI Digest: Conceptualising and Defending the Future
By Louisa Hann
It’s the beginning of a new year – a time when many of us are looking to the future. Whether you’re trying to stick to a resolution or counting down the days until spring, January is often charged with a combination of renewal, resolve, and trepidation.
If you’re leaning more towards anxiety than optimism this year, you’re not alone. The early 2020s have proved distinctly rocky at a global scale thanks to rising authoritarianism, new and emerging health crises, escalating geopolitical rivalries, and – perhaps most worryingly – intensifying climate breakdown. As Gindo Tampubolon explains in a recent blog, trust in climate science can have a detrimental effect on our mental health, with those in highly vulnerable countries feeling especially anxious.
Evidence and Experience: UN Decade of Healthy Ageing around the World
by Dr Gindo Tampubolon (Reader in Global Health, GDI) and Dr Elia Maggang (Honorary Fellow, Lincoln Theological Institute)
This year marks the mid-point of the decade and the global health initiative known as the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing. Led by the World Health Organization (WHO) in collaboration with other UN organisations, the Decade aims to improve the lives of older people, their families, and the communities in which they live. At the end of 2024, the WHO invited the University of Manchester’s Gindo Tampubolon and Elia Maggang to join a meeting of experts in life course and healthy ageing to examine progress towards such aims and advise on whether a mid-course correction is necessary.
The occasion prompted both academics to reflect on current evidence and the experiences of ageing in both high-income and developing countries.
Lessons from Africa – for Manchester
By Diana Mitlin
A recent conference on African Urbanism has provided a useful space for me to reflect on what the African experience has brought to my work and that of my colleagues. This has included academic scholarship, professional and policy engagement and activism. Given their potential to improve development in Manchester and the role the University plays in this, two lessons are immediately worth sharing.
Leadership for development as a catalyst for transformations
By academic staff members of the Manchester- Melbourne Masters in Leadership in Development
The role of self-leadership in navigating crises
By Mengistu Weldemariam
Master’s in Leadership for Development Alumnus and Programme Manager for Mortgage Stress Victoria in Melbourne, Australia
How does the way we think about ourselves affect our propensity to lead others? How can development practitioners harness their self-awareness and self-knowledge to reach ambitious goals? In this blog, I explore how our perceptions of ourselves can help us build resilience and shape our abilities to manage crises in the development space.
The Role of Knowledge in Social Protection Policies in Latin America
By Lina Arenas
University of Manchester GDI Alumna and Former Deputy Minister of Vulnerable Populations of the Peruvian Government
PhD candidate in Social Policy from The University of Edinburgh, UK
What role does knowledge really play in the making of social protection policies? Is it required more intensively at some stages of the policy-making process? Is more robust evidence or broader types of knowledge more legitimate than others? To what extent does all the time, money, and effort devoted by governments and policy communities actually influence their design, implementation, and ultimately their budget allocation?
New research project explores Syrian refugee crisis in Turkey in wake of 2023 earthquake
Update: Rethinking Economics Report and Student Reflections
A few months ago, the University of Manchester’s Post-Crash Economics Society and Rethinking Economics launched a report examining whether the economics curriculum is capable of tackling the world’s mounting crises. Global Development undergraduate and report contributor Sammi Dé wrote a blog about the report’s conception and his views surrounding the limitations of mainstream economic pedagogies.
Recently, Rethinking Economics published another scaled-up report examining the state of economics courses across UK universities. Now in his second year, Sammi reflects on some of the findings in the following blog, as well as the state of economics more generally.
Dams, Power and the Politics of Ethiopia’s Renaissance
by Dr Tom Lavers, Reader in Politics, Global Development Institute
More than 13 years after Ethiopia’s former Prime Minister Meles Zenawi laid its foundation stone, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) is finally nearing completion. A new open access book, Dams, Power and the Politics of Ethiopia’s Renaissance, examines the domestic and international political economy drivers of Ethiopia’s dam building programme and the role of electricity within Ethiopia’s project of state-led development.
COVID-19 deaths and global value chains: Labour losses cast long shadows
by Dr Gindo Tampubolon, Reader in Global Health
The COVID-19 pandemic forced countries to make difficult choices between protecting lives and supporting livelihoods, including jobs in global value chains (GVCs). While some countries reinforced onshore manufacturing capacity for essential goods, others reconfigured their participation in GVCs – the complex networks that have delivered the fruits of globalisation. Beyond policy choices, did the pandemic’s toll of 14 million excess deaths leave a lasting imprint on GVCs?