Engaging with the communities where we do research
One of our PhD candidates, Mapenzie Tauzie decided to organise an activity in Zomba, Malawi – the community from where her field researchers came from. The result was a spectacular display of football and netball for young people which went on for ten weeks, attended by 500 young people, with the finals watched by the local leaders. Find out more about her initiative called “I Am GDI”.
Theorising how extractive companies manage local disruption
Tomas Frederiksen, Lecturer in International Development, Global Development Institute and Matthew Himley, Associate Professor of Geography, Illinois State University
The extractive industry has a brutish reputation.
Since the 1980s, along with big dams, ‘extractives’ have been a byword for environmental destruction and human rights abuses. The heavy hand of industry destroying green pastures seems to be most vividly captured by the arrival of extractive industry in remote corners of the earth. As global demands for minerals, oil and gas have increased, the industry has expanded to new areas, creating new frontiers.
The extractive frontier is a place of upheaval. A now sizeable literature on mineral, oil, and gas development shows that when the extractive industry moves into ‘new ground’, it transforms landscapes and reshapes livelihoods. Conflict is often sparked as communities resist the changes wreaked on their lives, loss of access to resources and industry’s environmental impacts. read more…
Does inequality threaten trust in science?
Gindo Tampubolon, Lecturer in Poverty, Global Development Institute
16 July 2019 marked the 50th anniversary of the moon landing with Apollo 11. That scientific and engineering pinnacle of planetary exploration has gone on to transform our place in the universe and our understanding of the planet. Much of the challenges we face today like global warming and extreme poverty requires evidence and science for an adequate response. But how much do we trust science when we need it most?
Registration: From Politics to Power? Rethinking the politics of development conference
Registration is open for our flagship international conference convened by the Effective States and Inclusive Development Research Centre on ‘From politics to power? Rethinking the politics of development’ which will be held from 9 – 11 September 2019 in Manchester.
Confirmed Plenary Speakers to date include world leading experts Anne Marie Goetz (New York), Merilee Grindle (Harvard), Lant Pritchett (Harvard), James Robinson (Chicago), Prerna Singh (Brown), E. Gyimah-Boadi (Afrobarometer, Ghana) read more…
An Applied Data Justice Framework for Datafication and Development
Richard Heeks, Professor of Development Informatics
Data is playing an ever-growing role in international development. But what lens can we use to analyse the impact of data on development?
The emerging field of “data justice” offers some valuable ideas but they have not yet been put together into a systematic and comprehensive framework. My open-access paper – Datafication, Development and Marginalised Urban Communities: An Applied Data Justice Framework, written with Satyarupa Shekhar – provides such a framework, as shown below. read more…
Understanding migration in the Horn of Africa
GDI’s Oliver Bakewell is a key member of the Research and Evidence Facility on Migration in the Horn of Africa – and features in a new video outlining the project:
The Global Development Institute is Hiring
We have big ambitions at the GDI and to make them happen, we need the best research and teaching staff. If you have an outstanding track record and a commitment to social justice, then please come and join us.
Click on the job titles for more information:
Lecturer in Development Economics (Teaching & Scholarship)
1 August 2019 until 3 July 2020. Closing date: 29/07/2019
Research Associate on South-South Migration Hub
Can international trade agreements drive progress on labour standards?
Shamel Azmeh, Lecturer in International Development
With the EU raising the issue of labour standards with Korea under their free trade agreement and debates around labour provisions in the new NAFTA agreement intensify, Shamel Azmeh discusses the potential and the limitations of improving working conditions through trade agreements read more…
Visa rejection for African experts hits GDI conference
Today, we’re welcoming researchers and activists to Manchester for a conference on the challenges and opportunities of scaling up participation in urban settings.
But of the ten keynote speakers we invited from the Global South, only five have received a visa to travel to the UK. All five rejections were for colleagues from African countries.
Despite providing a wealth of evidence from The University of Manchester and their home organisations, ostensibly meeting all entry criteria, all five received rejections from the Home Office late last week.
Eritrean independence celebrations after the rapprochement with Ethiopia: plus ça change?
Fittingly, a few days since I returned from a visit to Eritrea that coincided with the 28th celebration of Eritrean independence on 24th May, an academic article I wrote in November 2018 about the rapprochement between Eritrea and Ethiopia has just been published (and can be accessed here).
Its last section on the potential future urged caution, a caution that seems more and more justified when considering my experiences of the last two weeks in Eritrea. My first visit to the region since the rapprochement was to the Ethiopian side, to Mekelle, in October 2018, a time when the border was truly open and few checks were in place for those crossing. This was always to be an unusual and temporary arrangement, until such a time when more formal rules and regulations that would guide the crossings of goods and people between both countries would be in place.