Alumni profile: Chris Foster
We heard that one of our alumni was coming back to Manchester to attend the Big and Open Data Workshop this month, so we sat down with Chris Foster to talk about how why he chose to study at the University of Manchester and what he’s been up to since he graduated.
Why did you choose to study at the University of Manchester?
There are a lot of great experts at the University of Manchester who look at intersection of ICT, digital technology and development, and that really attracted me – the opportunity to work with these world renowned experts. I’m also a big fan of Manchester, I really like the city!
What did you do after graduating?
I spent a little bit of time at the University of Manchester, developing some of the work I had done for my PhD. I then got a postdoctoral position at the University of Oxford, doing research in a similar area for nearly two years, before finding a lecturer position at the University of Sheffield.
What are you doing now?
I work at the University of Sheffield’s Information School, which explores social science around information, information technology and data. I’m really interested in how digital technologies are being used in various contexts, but particularly around firm contexts, and how firms are globalising, how they’re using digital technologies to help them globalise, and what are some of the advantages and disadvantages of that. I think this is an important research area at the moment as the internet and digital technologies are becoming more prevalent.
How has your University of Manchester degree helped you?
In two areas: first of all, in terms of thinking critically. When I first came to the University, I was interested in technology and development but I don’t think I had really understood or explored these topics in a critical way – the Master’s degree definitely gave me that. When I moved on to do the PhD, being able to plan and put into action an innovative programme of research was something that I was able to learn how to do with the support of the staff at GDI, and that has been a very valuable skill to learn.
What’s your best memory from the University of Manchester?
There were a couple of really fun memories: it was great when I finally submitted my PhD after all that time working on it, what a relief! The graduation itself was really good fun – there were four or five of us who had been together in the department for a few years, and we were able to come together to celebrate what we’d been able to achieve, which was a really nice experience.
What advice would you give to students?
Often when you finish you PhD, it can be quite a struggle to figure out what to do next – you’ll have been doing your PhD for quite a number of years so working out what to exactly to do after it can be difficult. This is particularly true when you’re looking to work in academia: it can be hard to move up that ladder to go from your PhD to become a lecturer, so there may be a period when you perhaps move around a bit to find something that fits suitably to what you’re interested in.
Another good piece of advice is that whilst you’re doing your PhD, there’ll have been a great number of academics and colleagues you’ll have interacted with, and these are great people to stay in touch with and possibly work and collaborate with in the future
Parliamentary book launch asks, “Should Rich Nations Help the Poor?”
Professor David Hulme with Rory Brooks CBE of the Global Development Institute’s philanthropically-funded Rory and Elizabeth Brooks Doctoral College
Giving a gathering of over 20 development professionals, journalists, alumni and MPs a reminder that 1.2 billion people went to bed in extreme poverty last night, Mike Kane MP opened up Professor David Hulme’s book launch at Westminster for a frank but positive discussion on how and why rich nations should help the poor.
Introducing the Global Development Institute (GDI) and its Rory and Elizabeth Brooks Doctoral College as a world leading research institution, the MP handed over to Professor Hulme who talked about his new book – Should Rich Nations Help the Poor? – within the context of Brexit and the decisions that need to be reached which will influence UK international development policies.
“It is a moral responsibility for rich nations to help the poor and, additionally, it is in their self-interest. If we are thinking of our own future, and our children and grandchildren, then we need a prosperous and stable world,” said Professor Hulme.
Addressing the issue of how we can help, Professor Hulme talked about how the traditional answer of foreign aid is not enough. We are now in a “post-aid world” where aid is still important, but makes up a smaller part of the answer. Instead, he argued for the need to reform international trade policies, so poor people and poor countries get a greater share of the benefits derived from trade; stopping illicit financial flows that siphon off income and assets from poor countries to rich countries by corporations and national elites; and, rapid action to reduce greenhouse emissions from rich countries and the provision of adaptation finance and technology to poor countries.
Mike Kane MP hosted the book launch at 1 Parliament Street
Another topic covered was the rise in inequality in many countries. This slows down poverty reduction and social progress and increasingly threatens to give political control to ‘the 1%’ who benefit excessively from economic growth and wealth creation. In many rich countries people have a diminishing belief that the lives of their children would be better than their own – this is a sentiment which has been fanned by populist leaders to blame ‘migration’ for problems that are actually caused by inequality. Global inequalities will have to be tackled if the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are to be achieved by 2030.
“If you are worried about economic migrants from Africa then you have to address inequality. If you consider the pay and opportunities of people living in Africa, then why would they stay in poverty and not move for a better life? We need to worry about job creation and pay in Africa.”
You can buy a copy of Professor David Hulme’s Should Rich Nations Help the Poor? now.
See live tweets from the event below
#ShouldRichNations Tweets
Call for Postdoctoral Fellowships as part of the Global Challenges Research Fund
The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the North West Doctoral Training Centre (NWDTC) have issued a call for Postdoctoral Fellowships as part of the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF).
This career opportunity emphasises impact and stakeholder engagement activities which build on candidates’ prior PhD research. Key points to note are:
- At the time of submission, applicants must either have a PhD or have passed their viva voce with only minor corrections, and have no more than three years of active postdoctoral experience.
- The proposed fellowship activities must be ODA compliant.
- The call is open to those who have completed a PhD within any institution of the North West DTC, i.e. Lancaster, Liverpool or Manchester Universities.
- The deadline for applications is 9 September; fellowship start dates are between November 2016 and January 2017.
- If you are interested in applying for this opportunity with the Global Development Institute as a hosting institution, please let us know by e-mailing judith.krauss@manchester.ac.uk – we will run a support session in early August.
Please find more details here.
Call for abstracts/presentations on ‘Mobile Technology for Agricultural and Rural Development in the Global South’
A call for abstracts/presentations on ‘Mobile Technology for Agricultural and Rural Development in the Global South’ has been issued.
The aim of the 20 October 2016 Workshop is to share research and practice on current trends in ‘Mobile Technology for Agricultural and Rural Development in the Global South’: specifically to bring together researchers from diverse disciplines with practitioners who have experience of implementing mobile applications and agriculture information systems in differing country contexts. We hope the workshop will shape a research agenda and form the basis for future research and practitioner partnerships.
Prospective presenters should submit an abstract of 200-400 words outlining their proposed paper or presentation to: mobileagworkshop@gmail.com with a deadline of 31 July 2016.
If you have any questions, please contact the workshop organiser: Dr. Richard Duncombe, Centre for Development Informatics, University of Manchester, UK richard.duncombe@manchester.ac.uk
Event: Should Rich Nations Help the Poor?
Join Professor David Hulme and Mike Kane MP for the launch of Should Rich Nations Help the Poor? in Westminster, 16.00-17.00, 18 July.
Professor Hulme’s new book explores the moral and practical arguments for why rich nations should help the poor. He contends that while aid is necessary, it is not sufficient to lift the 1.2 billion people around who remain trapped in poverty and calls for a radical rethink in the policies and priorities of rich nations.
If you’d like to attend, please register here.
If you’d like David to speak about his new book at your event, please drop an email to gdi@manchester.ac.uk
“Life is random”: Dr Hubert Escaith, Chief Statistician at World Trade Organisation visits the GDI
Judith Krauss, Post-doctoral associate and Aarti Krishnan, PhD researcher, Global Development Institute
“Let me say the most important thing first: I am the father of three daughters.” This memorable sentence kicked off a unique masterclass with Dr Hubert Escaith, the World Trade Organization’s Chief Statistician. His visit, jointly organised by the Rory and Elizabeth Brooks Doctoral College and the Global Production Networks, Trade and Labour research group, encompassed a masterclass with PhD researchers and a public lecture on ‘Global Value Chains, Trade and Development: Evidence-based Policy-Making’. The student-led seminar was to help PhD candidates look beyond academia, both in terms of making links to policy and practice, and regarding career prospects. And look beyond we certainly did, prompted by Hubert’s colourful and generously shared stories, openness, encouragement and inquisitiveness, culminating in the (fortunately rhetorical) question: “What do you want to do with your life?”
Even though Hubert protested vehemently that he was no ‘master’ with insights to share with a ‘class’, his distinguished career in international organisations, joy in conversing and desire to engage with young researchers suggests otherwise. After completing a PhD at Toulouse University in Applied Mathematics, he started working for the United Nations in Baghdad, Iraq. His work has since taken him via senior positions in monitoring and evaluation, statistics and economics across the world, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean, to his current work as WTO’s Chief Statistician, publishing throughout. “Something I have learned is that you don’t manage your life. You just make the most out of what you have.” In opposition to our current era, compulsively planning career prospects from a very young age, he instead pointed to his own experience as a succession of opportunities taken against the backdrop of growing up in humble beginnings, with the first priority always remaining the well-being of his family: “Life can be random.”
In school, Hubert loved history, philosophy and Greek, and was (by his standards) bad at mathematics, English and Spanish. He has since done a PhD in applied mathematics and has spent his working life in English and Spanish-speaking contexts. His very well-rounded outlook on life was a breath of fresh air, with his professionalism as a civil servant complemented by abiding interests in philosophy, literature and music: Hubert credited activities independent of work, such as choir-singing and theatre, with helping him grow in confidence at a young age. “In my time, nobody told you to find a job that you loved. I just always liked the job I had.”
He then turned his attention to his work for the last 10 years – the magical and yet sometimes slightly cumbersome world of DATA, and explained exactly how it can support bridging the academia-impact divide through evidence-based policy. A statement he made shocked academic data junkies like us: “Data is not used for policy-making, whatever gave you that idea – policy is made in parliaments on decisions of politicians.” That left us perplexed and a tad worried! But right after that, he said what was probably one of the most profound words we have ever heard: “Data can change the apriori of an opinion, and this is the power academics have – the ability to use data to change an apriori… a perception… to show policy-makers how things might really work rather than the way they think it does.” That sentence was worth a PhD: it allowed us to understand that data was actually a means to give a voice to the voiceless public, be it through large or small-scale surveys, a way we could build a narrative on what makes this complex world tick and use what we learnt to feedback into theory. Why is this process so important? Because as aptly put by Snepschuet: “In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is”.
Hubert Escaith’s career spanning several decades also allowed him to point out the vagaries of dominant thought and the repercussions of it changing, emphasising how in economics, Keynesianism was the order of the day during his studies, to be replaced by monetarist thinking as the dominant paradigm only fifteen years later. What does not change, however, is firstly the need for professionalism, and professionalism trumping ideological inclinations to avoid convictions getting in the way of truthful research and conduct. Secondly, the human condition is such that altruism is not as reliable a driver as self-interest, citing the “Fable of the bees”: bees’ work produces benefits for a wider audience; however, their inherent goal is serving themselves and their community. According to Hubert’s experience, the ‘dark side of the force’ a.k.a. the convergence of enlightened self-interest with public good fulfilment, was a tool to promote development rather than encumber it.
As the day came to a close participants of the masterclass and attendees of the lecture left feeling intellectually stimulated. But what truly left the biggest impression was his pointed question “what do you want to do with your life?” It is guaranteed to stay with all fifteen masterclass participants for a long time to come, highlighting not only that there is (a) life beyond academia, but also the need to think carefully about priorities. However, Hubert also would not have been Hubert had he not ended on a tongue-in-cheek adage: “Take my advice – I don’t use it anyway.”
Can we make anti-poverty programmes better?
By Minna Lehtinen, Communications Officer
One way that governments can help reduce poverty is by implementing social welfare programmes for those with low incomes, but the design of such programmes must be done with great care to make sure they actually achieve their poverty-reducing objectives.
A group of programmes that give cash to households with the expectation of breaking the inter-generational transmission of poverty are known as human development conditional cash transfer programmes. Typical transfer conditions include spending on schooling, going to the doctor regularly, and other investments intended to ensure that the cash is not only supplementing the household’s income and consumption, but also boosting the household’s own productive capacity. This follows the principle that poverty eradication is not limited to helping citizens meet their basic needs, but must also empower citizens to secure their own livelihoods.
In many such programmes, participants are periodically assessed on whether they continue to qualify for the programme, and once they have achieved a socio-economic status above the entry criteria, they exit the programme.
“Exit as entry” results in welfare losses
Juan M. Villa, Honorary Research Fellow at the Global Development Institute (GDI), and Armando Barrientos, Professor at the GDI, examined Colombia’s Familias en Acción programme in a recent GDI Working Paper. They found that current practice using of entry criteria to determine programme exit is not supported conceptually, analytically, or empirically, and can in fact be associated with welfare losses for excluded households. This, of course, is the opposite of what the programme is trying to achieve, and has significant implications for the design and implementation of any anti-poverty transfers programmes (conditional cash transfers, but also social pensions and family subsidies) using socio-economic status to determine when households leave the programme.
Click here to read the Working Paper, or read on below for a summary of the findings.
Exit as entry as a flawed concept
For an agency managing an anti-poverty transfer programme on a fixed and insufficient budget, using entry criteria to determine when households exit is assumed to maximise the programme’s poverty reduction effect by ensuring only those below the critical threshold participate in the programme. But this approach is not compatible with the objectives of a human development conditional cash transfer programme (which uses conditionality to build long-term capacity in households to keep them out of poverty for good). It doesn’t place a value on preventing households above the poverty line from falling back into poverty. Achieving this requires paying attention to how households can exit the programme sustainably, stay out of poverty and therefore, treating entry and exit criteria separately.
Analytical and empirical evidence from Colombia
Villa and Barrientos examined households who participated in Colombia’s Familias en Accion programme by 2006 but were excluded the following year because their welfare score was above the entry threshold. The research compares the households’ actual outcomes to what could have been expected had they remained in the programme, and the findings show that exit from the programme impacted the households negatively in three different ways:
Impact on schooling
Compared with those who remained in the programme, children in excluded households experienced:
- 12 fewer completed years of education
- Male children impacted more than female children (0.147 compared to 0.086 year shortfalls in education, respectively)
- Older children also suffered a higher shortfall than younger children (0.11 and 0.07 years respectively)
- Lower school attendance across the board, of just below 1 percentage point, which is modest but may have significant cumulative effects
Impact on work
As their incomes were reduced, households were forced to re-structure their work lives after exiting the programme, so exclusion resulted in:
- Fewer women going to work (2 percentage points reduced labour force participation)
- More men going to work (1.3 percentage point higher labour force participation)
- More men working in the informal sectors (about 1 percentage point increase)
- Households with children in school while in the programme experienced a more significant net effect from re-allocation of labour (and 4.2 percentage point increase in children under three in excluded households)
Impact on socio-economic status
Households who exited in 2007 were 3.8 percentage points more likely to be eligible for the programme than the households remaining in the programme in 2011, with rural households worse off than urban ones at 4.2 points. This represents a significant drop in the socio-economic status of excluded households, so it is clear that their exit did not happen sustainably.
Ways forward
Agencies implementing conditional cash transfer programmes are paying increasing attention to exit criteria and some have already adopted a range of strategies to address the issues “exit as entry” causes. For example, in 2013, Familias en Acción introduced a guaranteed two years leave to remain in the programme for households with welfare scores above the entry threshold but below a vulnerability threshold. Villa and Barrientos’s findings suggest more innovation in programme design and implementation is needed to better fulfil the programme objective to build household capacity to ensure they are able to exit and stay out of poverty in the longer term.
Focusing on aid means we miss more effective ways to promote development
Over the last few years, UK aid has acted as a lightning rod for criticism as it has risen to meet the international target of 0.7% of GNI, while other government spending has been subject to significant reductions.
The Daily Mail in particular has aggressively pursued a campaign against the aid budget and mobilised 230,000 supporters to sign a parliamentary petition calling for the 0.7% target to be scrapped as they claim it results in “huge waste and corruption”. The petition was recently debated by a packed room of MPs, the vast majority of whom lined up to defend UK aid spending, highlighting the positive impact it makes around the world.
UK aid is some of the most closely scrutinised in the world, by various parliamentary committees and independent external bodies. The Department for International Development is a leader in aid effectiveness and transparency, which helps drive up the standards of less progressive donors. And while the £12 billion annual aid budget is certainly a significant sum, it represents just 16p in every £10 of government spending. Collectively, we throw away much more in food waste (an estimated £19 billion) than we spend in aid.
However, I’m concerned that the apparent fixation we have on the aid budget in the UK means we’re ignoring even more effective ways to help poorer nations.
The idea that development can be achieved largely through foreign aid alone has been discredited. Countries that have experienced significant improvements in the well-being of their population in recent years have largely achieved this through engaging with markets and international trade, boosted by the end of the Cold War, China’s return to the global economy and favourable commodity prices. The creation and diffusion of relatively simple technical knowledge about health, hygiene, nutrition, organization and technologies has also played an important role. While effectively given aid, provided in the right context can provide vital assistance to people in need, it cannot ‘create’ development for whole societies.
If the UK and other rich nations are serious about helping to catalyse development across the world, there are five key policy areas that require urgent attention, which I explore in depth in my new book ‘Should Rich Nations Help the Poor’:
- Reform international trade policies so that poor countries and poor people can gain a greater share of the benefits derived from trade.
- Recognize international migration as an element of trade policy and a highly effective means of reducing poverty.
- Take action against climate change (mitigation and supporting adaptation) and take responsibility for the historical role of rich nations in creating global warming.
- Reform global finance to stop the siphoning off of income and assets from poor countries to rich countries by corporations and national elites.
- Limit the arms trade to fragile countries and regions and carefully consider support for military action (budgets, technology and even ‘feet on the ground’) in specific cases, such as the successful Operation Palliser in Sierra Leone.
This holistic approach to global development is the type of response envisaged by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which the UK signed up to just last September. However a recent report by the cross-party International Development Select Committee of MPs was highly critical of the lack of any sort of joined up thinking across government on key aspects of the 17 goals
In strident tones, the report highlights “a fundamental absence of commitment to the coherent implementation of the SDGs across government.” Without a proper cross government strategy, they fear “it is likely that areas of deep incoherence across government policy could develop and progress made by certain departments could be easily undermined by the policies and actions of others.” A formal mechanism to ensure policy coherence across Whitehall is called for.
Many of the SDGs are inherently political, calling for reductions in inequality, improvements in governance and for gender equality. In many areas, national ownership by citizens and state are vital. However in other issues that go beyond aid, there’s a clear agenda for action by countries of the Global North. But it’s precisely these issues, such as international tax and trade reforms, which will be hampered without clear commitment and coordination across governments like the UK. If we continue to focus on aid alone as a proxy for development, it’s also these issues that won’t receive the attention they deserve from policymakers.
From climate change to spiralling inequality, given the challenges the world faces it’s both morally right and in our own self-interests for rich nations like the UK to help the poor. But if we’re unable to move beyond aid and properly consider the most effective ways we can help poor countries, we’ll leave a world to our children and grandchildren that’s more unstable, less secure and with more people mired in poverty than there needs to be.
Listen | John Knight on China’s effective but flawed economic governance
Professor John Knight, The University of Oxford, recently spoke at the GDI on ‘the principal-agent problem, the developmental state, subjective well-being and social instability: China’s effective but flawed economic governance.’
Listen to the talk in full below
‘I feel trapped in limbo with my Syrian passport’
Luis Eduardo Pérez Murcia PhD researcher, Global Development Institute
The ongoing war in Syria has left millions of people in conditions of displacement either within or across national borders. Not all Syrian asylum seekers and refugees fled following direct threats and violence. As the experience of Noor illustrates, some left their country to pursue their professional and academic careers but then, because of dynamics of war, cannot not return.
Hand painted tile stating “Pray for Syria”.
This is the story of Noor, an international student who could not return to Syria because of the civil war. She is now hoping to be granted refugee status in the UK.
Noor, which in Arabic means ‘light’, came to England as an international student in 2014. By the time she arrived, the conflict in her country was being represented internationally as the ‘Syrian crises’. Coming to England has for long been an aspiration for Noor. She spent many years learning English and gaining the academic qualifications necessary to be accepted at a British university. However, she recalls that when she was accepted by The University of Manchester she was concerned about whether or not she would be able to obtain a visa, having heard that visas for Syrians, even those who are sponsored students, were being rejected. Everything worked out fine, however and Noor was able to come to England and pursue her dream of studying at a British University.
By 2015, the conflict in Syria had worsened and was no longer being described by the international media as a ‘Syrian crises’ but was being referred to as the ‘Syrian war’. Opportunities for Syrians to obtain visas were limited and millions were trapped within Syria or were able to flee to neighbouring countries. And others made the hazardous journey and tried to reach Europe by crossing the Mediterranean Sea.
Despite the escalation of the conflict, as soon Noor finished her studies she returned ‘home’ as planned. However, after only one day home in Damascus it became clear to her that what had initially been referred by international media to as an ‘uprising’ and later as a ‘crisis’ was indeed a ‘war’. Noor realised that ‘home’ was no longer a safe place in which she could pursue her dreams and achieve her aspirations. When Noor returned to England to attend her graduation ceremony it crossed her mind that England, a place in which she had had such a wonderful and productive time, could become her next home.
Noor applied for refugee status and immediately shifted from being an international student to being an asylum seeker. While waiting for the Home Office decision, and despite having the financial support of her family in Syria, Noor has been moving from one place to the other in order to keep her expenses down.
Noor’s story tells us something about what and where home is and what it means. Noor herself says that ‘home’ is a tricky concept and one that is hard to define. Ultimately she says, home is neither my country nor the physical house I was living in Damascus. Home to me is more a feeling”. Having spent a significant part of her life living in other countries including France, Saudi Arab, Lebanon and England, Noor says, “I see life as a train station. I am always ready to move”. She experiences home as a mobile space. “I feel at home in a place I like. I think family is central for my understanding of home but home is also the place you feel you can contribute the most. I am volunteering as a research assistant and bringing support to refugees in the UK, so I think England could now be my home”. She stresses that she is an independent woman able to work and contribute to this society as do other refugees. She added “If I am granted permission to stay, I will work, I will pay taxes and I will do my best to contribute to this society”.
However, waiting for the Home Office concerning her status in the UK is not free of tension and she is anxious about the future. Noor told me “I feel trapped in limbo. I am not saying I feel in limbo living in England. I can make this place my home. What I mean is that I feel trapped in limbo with my Syrian passport. I cannot work or move anywhere. [] In order to feel at home I need papers. I need the permission to stay”.
Noor’s emphasis on the need of ‘papers’ to feel at home in England can be better understood if we consider the role of the symbolic value of material things in the process of home-making. I asked Noor if she had brought anything with her to England that reminded of her home in Damascus. In response, she recounted a little story. When she had left her home in Damascus to get a job in a neighbouring country, her mother had asked her if she wanted to take something with her to remind her of her family at home. Noor had looked at her belongings and chose an envelope. This is the same envelope Noor brought to England. It contains her academic diplomas, language test results, letters of reference and her passport. When asked why she chose the envelope she simply replied “that is what I am. Thus, that is what I need to make a home for myself in this country”.
Noor’s experience is only one of millions of Syrians who have fled conflict or who cannot return to their country because of the escalation of war. Having to make a new home away is an experience shared by many of the over 60 million people currently living in conditions of displacement across the world.
Today, in celebrating the Refugee Day, the narrative of Noor calls our attention that refugees, as Maja Korac stresses, are ordinary human beings living in extraordinary circumstances. They are just people like us trying to find a safe place to live in the world.