The White Helmets: devastation, borders and humanity
By Caroline Boyd, Global Inequalities Campaign Manager
Last night we hosted a free, public screening of The White Helmets at the Manchester Museum as part of the ESRC’s Festival of Social Sciences.
Around 60 members of the public attended the open event which also formed part of our ongoing commitment to public engagement around global inequalities – one of our five research beacons at The University of Manchester. read more…
Is sustainability a useful concept in development?
Dr Daniele Malerba, researcher at the German Development Institute for the project, Implementing the Agenda 2030: Integrating Growth, Environment, Equality and Governance and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Manchester
Like two people falling in love, Development is nowadays rarely seen without Sustainability. And the latter changed the life of the former. For example, the Millennium Development Goals have become the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), culminating in the idea that development needs to be sustainable. But despite its established relevance, Sustainability might not be accepted by some of Development’s friends, for reasons I will try to outline later. Some evidence of this tension was given at the 2017 Annual Development Studies Association conference, the theme of which was “Sustainability Interrogated: Societies, Growth, and Social Justice”. GDI asked the conference participants: “Is sustainability a useful concept in development?” Nearly half of the voters (46%) indicated sustainability is a complicated concept, more than the voters indicating it as a central focus (36%); the minority (18%) did not think sustainability is a useful concept in development. Why is a science-driven concept like sustainability not thought of as useful by everybody? Why do Development’s friends think that Sustainability will not make Development’s life better? read more…
Shrinking manufacturing employment is “bad news for developing countries”
Andy Sumner, Reader in International Development in the Department of International Development, King’s College London and director of the ESRC Global Poverty & Inequality Dynamics (GPID) Research Network and Lukas Schlogl, Research Associate with the ESRC GPID Research Network at King’s College London.
What are the implications of premature deindustrialisation? What—if anything—is so special with manufacturing? How can we make sense of recent growth episodes in the developing world? What industrial and employment policies should be pursued?
The Global Development Institute at the University of Manchester and the ESRC Global Poverty & Inequality Dynamics Research Network co-hosted a PhD masterclass with Harvard’s Dani Rodrik to address these questions. read more…
“Can you say that again, but faster?” Research communications lessons from Instagram and storytelling
As we at the Global Development Institute like a challenge, we decided to foray into several slightly unconventional research communications methods in the past month. As our experiments with Instagram and storytelling demonstrated, engagement with new channels will require adapting what you say and how you say it, but the why never changes.
The two media of our choice, Instagram and spoken storytelling, appear diametrically opposed. One is based on pictures and 15-second videos, very much a product of the 21st century. The other one is a time-honoured practice that is central to how we perceive the world and ourselves. Nevertheless, both start from the same premise: what is the story? What is the kernel of truth within pages and pages of research findings to be shared with a larger audience?
In Conversation: Prof David Hulme and Prof Dani Rodrik
Be a fly on the wall as GDI’s Executive Director, Prof David Hulme, interviews Prof Dani Rodrik, Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, about globalisation, inequality and trade, as well as the sociology of economists, how the decay of norms in liberal democracies might impact the rest of the world, what to be concerned about for India, and why China is always a surprise. They also discuss how Prof Rodrik’s research has led to an examination of populism, how populism differs in the developed and developing worlds, and how in most of the latter, populism is not “true” populism in its historical sense or definition.
read more…
Podcast: Uma Kothari on migration and development
In August 2017 Prof Uma Kothari, Global Development Institute, spoke at the EADI NORDIC 2017 conference on ‘Contesting Reconfigured Boundaries: Migration and Development’. The conference was a joint partnership between EADI (European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes), NFU (Norwegian Association of Development Research), the University of Bergen (UiB) and the Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI).
You can listen to the podcast below or on: Stitcher, iTunes, Soundcloud, Castbox, RSS, & tunein
Note: This article gives the views of the author/academic featured and does not represent the views of the Global Development Institute as a whole.
GDI Lecture Series: economics of populism with Prof Dani Rodrik
On Thursday, 26 October, Prof Dani Rodrik of the Harvard Kennedy School delivered the Global Development Institute Annual Lecture as part of the GDI Lecture Series. The lecture was entitled the economics of populism.
You can watch the livestream below. You can also listen to the podcast below
The trouble with stubble: The politics of cleaning India’s air
Dr Pritish Behuria, Hallsworth Research Fellow, Global Development Institute
Farmer burning stubble
Credit: Raschpal Singh and Hansa Singh
Over the last few years, there has been increased public attention on the dangerously high levels of pollution in New Delhi and in other parts of India. In 2014, a World Health Organization report found that New Delhi had the dirtiest atmosphere of 1,600 cities across the world. In November 2016, one CNN report claimed that New Delhi was the most polluted city in the world at that time. India’s Central Pollution Control Board found that air in other Indian cities (including Bhiwadi in Rajasthan, Kolkata and Agra) was even worse than the capital.
Much has been written about the sources of India’s pollution. In 1997, the Ministry of Environment published a white paper on pollution in Delhi (though very little action was taken). Two government reports highlighted key pollutants including the burning of coal, petrol, diesel, gas, biomass and waste and dust (road and windblown) – though other government studies arrived at different conclusions. Dust generated through infrastructure projects in the capital and annual increases in the number of cars have also contributed to increase in carbon emissions, particularly through diesel cars and trucks. One report suggested the number of vehicles registered in Delhi increased from 2.3 million in 1975 to 4.2 million in 2004 and is estimated to be around 7.2 million as of 2016.
Podcast: Richard Heeks on the digital gig economy
Professor Richard Heeks recently delivered a seminar entitled ‘Decent Work and the Digital Gig Economy in Developing Countries’. You can listen to the podcast of the seminar below.
This talk was based on Prof Heeks recent Development Informatics Working Paper, Decent Work and the Digital Gig Economy: A Developing Country Perspective on Employment Impacts and Standards in Online Outsourcing, Crowdwork, etc.
Open Access Week at GDI
Prof Diana Mitlin, Managing Director, Global Development Institute
The majority of research at GDI is made available either Green or Gold Open Access, and our GDI Working Paper Series is always free to download. Open Access is key in supporting the core values that GDI holds as an Institute: inclusivity, responsibility, equity and sustainability.
GDI takes a three-pronged approach to delivering our vision of promoting a socially-just world, and one of the three is to produce and co-produce research that extends knowledge frontiers. This cannot be done unless research is available and disseminated widely and freely. And Open Access is exponentially important in a field such as Development Studies, where many of our colleagues and partner institutions in the Global South cannot afford expensive journal subscriptions. There is much to be done and that can be done to help close the information and research gaps between the Global North and South, and publishing Open Access whenever possible is a small step many of us can take.
Open Access Week is taking place for the 10th time this year, and the theme is “Open Access in order to…“. To celebrate, GDI will be highlighting Open Access research from across our research themes, so stay tuned.
Note: This article gives the views of the author/academic featured and does not represent the views of the Global Development Institute as a whole.