Following on yesterday’s conversation with Matthew Lockwood, I was recently interviewed by a new ‘slow news’ site called Tortoise, Tortoise Tortoise (nice name). They were doing a background piece on the climate change movement, and wanted to discuss the politics. Apart from regurgitating Matthew’s ideas, (with credit natch), I looked at the 2018/19 upsurge as a potential case study in

I’ve had a couple of people asking why I haven’t been doing more on climate change on this blog. Be careful what you wish for…… I spent a lovely summer’s evening recently discussing the politics of climate change with Matthew Lockwood. Matthew is an old friend, who has just revived his must-read Political Climate blog. Over the years, Matthew has

This was the topic for the latest in a series of Brixton lunches which seem to proliferate in the summer lull. I was talking to Miriam Wells from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a very cool organization (@TBIJ if you’re on twitter) where she has just become the ‘Impact Editor’. Now she has to work out what that means –

In this letter, first published by Africa is a Country, the authors question the validity and fetishization of “African Studies” within British higher education. Wangũi wa Kamonji convenes the collective Afrika Hai from her base in East Africa. Orapeleng Rammala was born in South Africa and raised in England. Jesutofunmi Odugbemi applies her sense of justice, ingenuity, and leadership in areas

In this post, Stanislas Bisimwa Baganda writes about imbalanced power relations in field research, which can not only have negative impacts on the quality of work, but endanger the lives of local research assistants. He is a researcher in the Groupe d’Etude sur le Conflit et la Sécurité Humaine (GEC-SH) and a consultant in project management. This piece is part

Lately, I’ve enjoyed learning about the development and status of women’s rights movements and the feminist agenda in the Balkan countries, which in many ways sit uncomfortably within geopolitical and developmental binaries like Global South/Global North, developed/developing. Here is a compilation of some stand-out contributions from four of the most prominent women’s rights activists in the Balkans.

Emily Janoch of CARE International wants to talk about failure Everyone agrees that we need to learn more from failure, but … you first. I sat on a ‘failure panel’ once where two speakers weren’t even allowed to mention the organization where they worked, much less use current failure examples. Over coffee, everyone will talk about what’s not working, but

ODI’s Tiina Pasanen argues that more data doesn’t necessarily mean we make better decisions. It often means just having more data that is not used Do any of these situations sound familiar to you? as an M&E manager, you worry that there’s a crucial aspect of your project that the current logframe doesn’t cover as a programme manager, most of

Vishwesh Sundar has recently graduated with an Advanced Master’s degree in International Relations and Diplomacy from Leiden University, The Hague. He was also a research assistant at the Leiden University Institute for Area Studies where he assisted with a project on South-to-West Asia migration governance. We live in a globalised world, and my family is an epitome of that phenomenon.

I’ve been taking advantage of the summer lull to skim some of the backlog of tomes that have accumulated on my study floor. Some were so bad and/or obscure that they really don’t deserve a mention, but two on activism got my attention. First up, Be the Change by Gina Martin. Full disclosure, I bought this by mistake, mixing up

Felogene Anumo is a  pan-African feminist activist who is passionate about using her creativity, politics and intellect to strengthen feminist movements to build collective power. She co-leads the Building Feminist Economies program at the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID). If you have been on the breastfeeding journey or supported a loved one through it, you may have heard these myths:  “Breastmilk alone

Blimey, here’s a blogpost from former Oxfam GB boss Mark Goldring, written in response to a tweet of mine, repeated below. Pleased to see that someone takes my social media seriously. “’@Oxfam’s published its evaluation of its 2013-19 Strategic Plan. Some +ves: ‘one lesson rises to the top: we must learn how to continuously test & review our theories of