Email like a boss and other Links I Liked

July 15, 2019
Visa applications: emotional tax and privileged passports (here’s Uganda v UK). Bathsheba Okwenje on an ongoing scandal. Demystifying Belt and Road: The Struggle to Define China’s “Project of the Century”. Anything by Yuen Yuen Ang is reliably gold, and now this paper is Open Access From welfare in one country to global poverty alleviation…and now where? Another top reflection from
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Featured image for “Return to Chiquitania: What’s changed in the 13 years since my first, mind-blowing visit?”

Return to Chiquitania: What’s changed in the 13 years since my first, mind-blowing visit?

July 12, 2019
Back in 2006, two encounters with grassroots change processes shaped a lot of what I have written ever since. The first was with the fishing communities of Tikamgarh – I went back to see them again in 2016 and made this video. The other was the Chiquitano indigenous group in Bolivia, a second inspiring story in which grassroots mobilization took
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Featured image for “How can we improve the way we move from analysing power to designing change strategies?”

How can we improve the way we move from analysing power to designing change strategies?

July 11, 2019
One of the most productive conversations in my recent trip to Bolivia was a discussion with Oxfam Bolivia staff on the shortcomings of my/our current thinking about how to move from analysing power to designing strategies to bring about change. The current advice is to start with a power analysis, then move to mapping the relevant stakeholders, and on the
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Featured image for “On Africa’s feminist frontlines, we need accessible care practices to sustain our movements”

On Africa’s feminist frontlines, we need accessible care practices to sustain our movements

July 10, 2019
Jessica Horn is a feminist activist, writer and technical advisor on women’s rights. She is a co-founder of the African Feminist Forum and currently works as Director of Programmes for the African Women’s Development Fund.  Feminism is having its global moment – that heady feeling when a movement’s revolutionary demands are being heard by the majority, even echoed by the
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“Waiting for the morning birds”: researcher trauma in dangerous places

July 9, 2019
Thamani Mwaka Précieux is a researcher with Land Rush at the Institut Supérieur de Développement Rural of Bukavu. This piece is part of the new “Bukavu Series” blog posts by the GIC Network.  Doing research in the DRC is a dangerous job, due to widespread insecurity in various parts of the country, and complicated by the presence of multiple armed groups. This
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Links I Liked

July 8, 2019
The Times proves that Britain is rapidly moving beyond parody ht Hannah Jane Parkinson ‘The core policy paradigm continues to shape the framework of policy-makers’ assessments. Evidence matters, but ideas shape policy in more fundamental ways than we might realise.’ Good study of Ireland’s response to the Financial Transactions Tax To build stronger research institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa, we need
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Featured image for “Meet the artist changing gut reactions to the Philippines ‘war on drugs’”

Meet the artist changing gut reactions to the Philippines ‘war on drugs’

July 5, 2019
Jay Ramirez writes about Carlo Gabuco’s visceral, intimate and poignant depictions of Duterte’s ‘war on drugs’ in the Philippines. Some brilliant insights on the power of art that bring the concept of human rights “down to the gut.” In an art fair in Manila in March last year, one installation caught everybody’s eye. A blue single-seater armchair sits in the
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Featured image for “What have we learned from a close look at 3 DFID Adaptive Management programmes?”

What have we learned from a close look at 3 DFID Adaptive Management programmes?

July 4, 2019
Adaptive Management week part 3 (with some trepidation given the recent comments from Heather Marquette et al about the proliferation of flakey case studies in lieu of evidence)…. My paper with Angela Christie summarizing our 3 case studies of big DFID-funded Adaptive Management projects in Myanmar, Tanzania and Nigeria is now online. Every word in its 26 pages is golden,
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What we’re missing by not getting our TWP alphabet straight

July 3, 2019
TWP guru Heather Marquette does everyone a great service by explaining the important differences between all the acronyms. I am struck by how often people say ‘TWP/PDIA/adaptive management/PEA…whatever’. Kind of like when my great-aunt calls me by various relatives’ names first before getting mine right – ‘Sheila… Mary…Lily…Heather!’ – these things may share a common genesis, and there are threads that
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Featured image for “What does the evidence tell us about ‘thinking and working politically’ in development assistance?”

What does the evidence tell us about ‘thinking and working politically’ in development assistance?

July 2, 2019
We’re having an ‘Adaptive Management week’ on FP2P, because so much good material has been coming through recently. First up is a new paper by Niheer Dasandi, Edward Laws, Heather Marquette, and Mark Robinson that I read on the way to the TWP conference in Washington that I wrote about recently. It really got me thinking. The paper is pretty damning:
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#PowerShifts Resources: Collective Mapping

July 1, 2019
Maybe you’ve already read one of the recent #PowerShifts pieces on how the Waorani are using maps in court to uphold their land rights. Pretty powerful, right? For a while now, I’ve been increasingly curious about collective cartography as a concrete method and tool that can encourage participation, generate collaborative knowledge, and politicise change processes as it visualizes power relations.
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