Featured image for “How Covid and Inequality Feed Off Each Other: Launching the 2020 Commitment to Reduce Inequality Index”

How Covid and Inequality Feed Off Each Other: Launching the 2020 Commitment to Reduce Inequality Index

October 8, 2020
Max Lawson and Matthew Martin launch the new index, published by Oxfam and Development Finance International. Are more equal countries better able to cope with crises like Covid-19? When we look at humanitarian crises like famines or droughts, there is a fair amount of evidence that more equal countries are more resilient, that the impacts are more evenly spread, and
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Featured image for “What’s the best way to manage information overload on development? My favourite synthesizers and other tips.”

What’s the best way to manage information overload on development? My favourite synthesizers and other tips.

October 7, 2020
How to cope with Information Overload – how much of the daily tide of opinion and research on aid, development, politics etc can you manage to surf, while still doing the day job (which may well involve adding to it)? Some colleagues suffer from FOMO and ICYMI, hopping between social media in a constant scavenging for wisdom, or at least
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Featured image for “‘Cutting Edge Issues in Development’ Heads up for an amazing series of online lectures, starting next week”

‘Cutting Edge Issues in Development’ Heads up for an amazing series of online lectures, starting next week

October 2, 2020
Organizing (along with James Putzel) the LSE’s guest lecture series on ‘Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking and Practice’ has turned out to be one of the few genuine silver linings in the Covid cloud. Because we’ve had to move to fully online, we’ve been able to get some of the world’s most interesting thinkers to speak to us from
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What do 13,000 children in 46 countries have to tell us about living with COVID-19?

September 10, 2020
Guest post by Save the Children International’s Melissa Burgess and Michael O’Donnell The world is certainly not lacking in research on COVID-19. But there have been gaps in empirical data showing the lived experience of people around the world. Today, Save the Children is filling some of those gaps with the release of the findings from an unprecedented study, asking
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Launching a new Research and Action programme on ‘Emergent Agency in a Time of Covid’. Want to join us?

September 9, 2020
Mutual aid groups morphing into long term citizens’ organizations; women’s organizations forming to address the surge in domestic violence during lockdown; small producers switching to producing protective equipment for health and care workers. Across the world, people are responding to the pandemic at a local level by acting, organizing and learning. What kinds of patterns can be identified in this
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Cracks in the knowledge system: whose knowledge is valued in a pandemic and beyond?

August 28, 2020
Guest post by Jon Harle Many of the inequities which COVID-19 has exposed – and exacerbated – have been with us for a long time.  Setting aside very stark disparities in access to health services, and the ability to maintain decent livelihoods, COVID has shown us once again the processes of exclusion that are baked into the ways in which
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3 advocacy case studies I would love to read (on long term norm shifts). Anyone fancy writing them?

August 27, 2020
On the off chance that someone is looking for an interesting research topic, here are 3 case studies related to norm change that I would love to read about, but don’t currently have time to research myself. If you are interested in picking up any of them, I’d love to discuss (and read the result). 1. The canonization of Oscar
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Featured image for “Zooming in with LSE’s thinkers on International Development (and me)”

Zooming in with LSE’s thinkers on International Development (and me)

July 30, 2020
One of my more enjoyable projects during lockdown has been finding out what my LSE colleagues do all day. We have recorded a series of 15 minute podcasts called ‘Zooming in With ….’ (catchy, eh?). Each interview is roughly divided up between their lives, an area of their research, and what insights it provides onto the current pandemic and response.
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Featured image for “What have we learned from four years’ research into empowerment and accountability in fragile/violent settings?”

What have we learned from four years’ research into empowerment and accountability in fragile/violent settings?

July 28, 2020
I’m still reeling from my first serious zoomarathon – 12 hours on zoom over 3 days (plus prep), with 50 researchers around the world from the Action for Empowerment and Accountability (A4EA) consortium. I can report back that unfortunately, my mood swings are much the same as in conferences (but with added anxiety/grumpiness from struggling to manage combo of four
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Featured image for “How has global multi-dimensional poverty changed over the first ten years of measurement?”

How has global multi-dimensional poverty changed over the first ten years of measurement?

July 23, 2020
Sabina Alkire presents the headlines from the latest Multi-Dimensional Poverty report Poverty is not just about income – dollars per day. It includes indicators on poor health, education, housing and more (see graphic). For the last ten years, we’ve been measuring this more nuanced multi-dimensional poverty – here’s what we’ve found. At least 1.3 billion out of 5.9 billion people
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Featured image for “What kind of research should inform Covid responses?”

What kind of research should inform Covid responses?

June 22, 2020
This post is co-authored with Irene Guijt If we agree that evidence-informed policy and practice are good things, we need to think about what kind of research gets commissioned. Some kinds of research are definitely more useful than others.  We’ve been discussing the urgent needs in Covid research with Heather Marquette (after her great April FP2P posts on this) and
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Featured image for “How can Covid-19 be the catalyst to decolonise development research?”

How can Covid-19 be the catalyst to decolonise development research?

June 4, 2020
Guest post by Melanie Pinet and Carmen Leon-Himmelstine of the ODI Covid-19 is an unprecedented moment, halting life as we know it. For the global development community, the effects have been profound. Several NGOs have had to scale back or completely stop their operations overseas, while local actors and civil society are rapidly organising to respond to the crisis through their own
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