Featured image for “UN Women makes Norm Change central to its mission”

UN Women makes Norm Change central to its mission

November 28, 2023
Bafflingly, I was recently invited to an online ‘Expert Group Meeting’ to help UN Women flesh out a really important new strategy – making norm change central to its role. This from the Concept Note for the session: ‘In recognition of the emerging emphasis on an articulated approach to social norms in international development and acknowledging that discriminatory social norms
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Featured image for “What can we learn from looking at the overlaps between innovations in ways of doing research and neglected development issues?”

What can we learn from looking at the overlaps between innovations in ways of doing research and neglected development issues?

November 23, 2023
The same subjects have been coming up again and again in random conversations recently, especially the ones where someone comes down to South London for a general chat in a local coffee shop (one of my favourite ways of avoiding work). In a recent discussion with Oxfam Mexico’s Estefanie Hechenberger, a small penny dropped – the value of looking at
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Featured image for “Pracademics: just a clunky new word, or something more significant/substantial?”

Pracademics: just a clunky new word, or something more significant/substantial?

November 9, 2023
Pracademics. Horrible word, interesting concept: people who straddle, however uncomfortably, the worlds of practice and academia. This week, I spent an hour talking through pracademia with fellow pracs Tom Kirk (LSE) and Willem Elbers (Radboud University), who’s editing a Development in Practice double issue on the topic as part of a new initiative to promote pracademia (they were inundated with
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Featured image for “Think tanks are struggling. They need to change.”

Think tanks are struggling. They need to change.

October 25, 2023
Guest post by Enrique Mendizabal of On Think Tanks Just 15% of respondents say it’s getting easier to operate as a think tank, according to the 2023 Think tank state of the sector report. And over 50% of respondents in Latin America & the Caribbean, the USA & Canada, and Africa say it is getting harder to operate. I think
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Featured image for “5 Things we Learned from Evaluating the Impact of Research”

5 Things we Learned from Evaluating the Impact of Research

September 28, 2023
Guest post by Cordelia Lonsdale and Dr Gloria Seruwagi The Research for Health in Humanitarian Crises (R2HC) programme has an explicit impact mission: the research funded through the programme should improve health outcomes for people affected by humanitarian crises. R2HC uses case studies to evaluate not only the outcomes and impacts of funded research, but to understand the processes, activities
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Who Decides What Constitutes ‘Knowledge’ on Climate Change?

August 31, 2023
Thanks to Irene Guijt for sending over her 2021 chapter (gated, sorry – boooh!) on ‘The urgency for epistemic and political climate justice’, co-authored with Jacobo Ocharan and Velina Petrova for an edited volume, Knowledge for the Anthropocene. Don’t worry about the slightly intimidating title (confession: I always find ‘epistemic’ sending me scuttling back to the dictionary, along with ‘ontological’,
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Featured image for “Designing ‘Research for Impact’ still seems difficult for a lot of academics. Why?”

Designing ‘Research for Impact’ still seems difficult for a lot of academics. Why?

August 8, 2023
Because I have one foot in the LSE and one in Oxfam, I sometimes get hauled in as a research ‘user’ (makes me sound like I have a drug problem) to review research funding applications and discuss whether, if approved, the research is likely to have much impact on the real world. I have to say, that recent experiences have
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Featured image for “In your mid/late career and want to do a PhD? Here’s some good news.”

In your mid/late career and want to do a PhD? Here’s some good news.

August 2, 2023
One of the most popular posts on FP2P has been ‘How to get a PhD in a year (without giving up the day job)’. It discussed my ‘PhD by published work’, completed in 2011 at Oxford Brookes University, and what a great fit it was for someone well on in their career, or who has grown-up bills to pay. Fast
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Featured image for “The Role of ‘Critical Friends’ in Research and Aid Programmes”

The Role of ‘Critical Friends’ in Research and Aid Programmes

July 20, 2023
One particular chapter in How to Engage Policy Makers with your Research felt particularly relevant to me. For some years, I have been working with Exfamer Jane Lonsdale, in Tanzania, Myanmar and now in Papua New Guinea (PNG), where she helps run a big Aussie-funded programme on citizen engagement. I support Jane and the teams she works with by commenting
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Featured image for “How to Engage Policy Makers with your Research: The Art of Informing and Impacting Policy. Book Review to kick off Research for Impact week on FP2P”

How to Engage Policy Makers with your Research: The Art of Informing and Impacting Policy. Book Review to kick off Research for Impact week on FP2P

July 18, 2023
Edited by a bunch of UK academics (Oxford Brookes and Manchester), this book is a gold mine for anyone interested in research for impact (R4I) – the holy grail (at least in terms of lip service) of much of modern academia. Best thing I’ve read on the subject, with something for more or less everyone, so I’m going to devote
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Featured image for “Want to hear some Good News? Global Poverty is falling (kind of).”

Want to hear some Good News? Global Poverty is falling (kind of).

July 13, 2023
The annual Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) report, jointly published since 2010 by the United Nations Development Programme and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), came out this week. The 2010 bit is important – the MPI has now been going long enough to start to identify trends in the nature of more nuanced, holistic (poverty plus) deprivation
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Featured image for “Showing Your Working when you come up with a ‘Killer Fact’”

Showing Your Working when you come up with a ‘Killer Fact’

July 12, 2023
Oxfam got some headlines last week with ‘World’s 722 biggest companies ‘making $1tn in windfall profits’’. This is a good example of a ‘killer fact’ – a memorable statistic that summarizes an injustice, in this case a massive windfall for big corporates at a time of global austerity and spiralling food and fuel prices. Here’s my 2019 guide to writing
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