Developing our Research Environment
Paul Barry, Cluster Convenor: Management and Governance in Development
On Monday 18th December, seven first year PhD students from the Brooks Doctoral College met with a group of Global Development Institute academics to discuss informally how their PhD research is progressing. The PhD students, all studying Management and Governance in Development, represent a diverse range of countries, that is, Chile, Ghana, China, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, UK and Thailand. This diversity is also apparent in the research foci underpinning their PhD proposal which research topics including public sector provision for disadvantaged groups, the management of NGOs, and leadership issues in private sector organisations. read more…
Using Board Games to Enhance Teaching in Higher Education
Dr Kate Rowlands, Global Development Institute
Creative approaches to teaching and learning are increasingly being used throughout Higher Education and beyond. Earlier this month I chaired the latest SEED “Teaching Matters” session, which provides lectures with a chance to gain new insights and share experiences.
In a highly interactive workshop, Dr Chrissi Nerantzi from the Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching, Manchester Metropolitan University helped us to explore the use of board games to enhance learning and teaching activities.
Our five most read blogs of 2017
We take a look back at our top five most-read blogs of 2017.
GDI Lecture Series: Oxfam’s use of evidence for influencing with Dr Irene Guijt
On Wednesday, 13 December, Dr Irene Guijt gave a lecture entitled ‘Evidence for Influencing: Balancing research integrity and campaign strategy in Oxfam’. You can listen to the podcast below.
- Find out more about the other talks in our GDI Lecture series
Aid scepticism isn’t damaging donations to international charities – but it might in future
Dr Nicola Banks , Lecturer, International Development: Urban Development and Global Urbanism
Christmas is a time for giving, when people think about how to extend their generosity to those in greater need. We put additional items in our trolley to donate for food banks, have a clear out of blankets, warm clothes or toys for local charities, or search for unique charity gifts that help disadvantaged people overseas.
Since the financial crisis, international aid and development spending has been in the firing line. The British government’s pledge to spend 0.7% of gross national income on aid has acted as a lightning rod for criticism from the right-wing media, who claim the money is mispent and that it should be spent in the UK.
My colleagues and I were interested in exploring the effects of austerity and the continuing narrative of aid scepticism on the development sector. So we embarked on a quest to map the UK’s development NGOs, including charities who help in emergency situations as well as those funding longer-term development projects.
We’ve now produced a database of over 900 development NGOs that spend over £10,000 a year, tracking their incomes and expenditures from 2009 to 2015 (the last year of publicly available data). In 2015 alone, we found that the British public contributed 40% of the sector’s overall income of nearly £7 billion – equivalent to around half of aid spending of £12.2 billion by the government in that year. read more…
The see-saw effects of inequality
Kunal Sen, Professor of Development Economics, Global Development Institute
When commentators refer to rising inequality, they mostly mean increased inequality in rich countries like the US. But while national inequality may have increased in some countries, global inequality has decreased significantly over the past 25 years. Professor Kunal Sen explains more.
Consider two workers, one in the Rust Belt state of Wisconsin in the United States and the other in Shanghai, China. The American worker has seen their real wages stagnate for a long time, contributing to large increases in inequality in the US. The Chinese worker has seen their real wages slowly converge to those of the American worker.
Whose disparity should we care most about? That of the American, who has become worse off in relative terms in their own country over time? Or the Chinese worker, who has both grown richer in absolute terms, and whose position has improved as compared to their American counterpart? read more…
A love letter to Manchester: My year at the Global Development Institute
Hamza M. Arsbi, MSc International Development and CEO of Science League
The University of Manchester is a world-renowned institution with an impressive record, which is why I choose to study my Masters in International Development at its Global Development Institute. However, the city of Manchester itself, still trying to grow beyond its industrial past and compete as an international hub, is still a very underappreciated city. My year at The University of Manchester has taught me so much more than what my course curriculum contained. The city, the University, and its people have given me a transformative experience. read more…
Academia-fatigue, systemic shocks and the power of drama
This blog originally appeared on the Manchester Migration Lab website
Blog by Natalie Anne Hall, PhD Candidate, Sociology, The University of Manchester
As researchers, we often register for conferences excited and hopeful, arrive at them slightly nervous and, as our energy wanes throughout long days of listening, thinking and acting out our professional personas, leave them rather exhausted. Moreover, as human beings, our levels of motivation, concentration, and intellectual capacity are not constant. Once in a while I find myself experiencing ‘academia-fatigue’, longing for a more human or ‘real-world’ experience of research and its relevance. It was amidst these vague sentiments that I sought reprieve in ‘The Tin Ring’ performance at the Migration Lab’s World on the Move conference. read more…
Social Mobility Research in the Global South: What Do We Know? What Do We Need to Know?
By Vegard Iversen, Anirudh Krishna and Kunal Sen
In spite of recent and unprecedented poverty reduction, the notion that an individual’s expected level of achievement should be ‘a function only of his effort and not of his circumstances’ remains a distant ideal. While research has added to our understanding of poverty dynamics and of policies to alleviate deprivation, most poverty escapes continue to be marginal and fragile.
When gauged, instead, as steps on a ‘rags to riches’ or social status ladder – and from one generation to the next – it becomes clear that moderate or large individual ascents and the drivers of such more notable achievements, are neither well documented nor particularly well understood.
MSc Organisational Change and MSc Project Management Students Visit Auto Trader Group
On 1st December 2017, students on the MSc programmes in Organisational Change and Development and the Management and Implementation of Development Projects visited the Auto Trader Group headquarters in Manchester. Auto Trader is a large private sector company, listed in the FTSE 250 index, which has undergone a remarkable transformation from a paper-based to a high technology digitally-driven business organisation. The visit, organised as part of the two MScs’ programmes of enhanced activities, provided the students with an opportunity to gain insights into some of the practice-focused people and change management challenges faced by private sector organisations. We asked two of the MSc programme representatives to reflect on the visit. read more…