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Had an interesting exchange with a friend active in UK grassroots politics this week, who asked ‘What’s the best reading around how to build effective networks? I’m basically a little suspicious atm as it all seems a bit stakeholder mappy / retrospective analysis of change, rather than practical, pro-active strategy. It’s not that I don’t understand the importance of systems,

Guest post by Veronica Amarante, Nisha Arunatilake, Ronelle Burger, Arjan de Haan, Ana-Lucia Kassouf and Lucas Ronconi The international community has long accepted that development needs to be locally owned, and that international support and cooperation need to facilitate leadership by local actors. Yet it is increasingly noticeable that development research is lagging behind in this respect. As we raise

Sorry to be such a killjoy, but I’m with him. A rural hospital in Bangladesh is named the world’s best new building ht Tobias Denskus I’ve been off work all week with Covid (after three vaccinations, more like mild flu than a death sentence), so stories like this resonate even more than usual. The Vaccine Mark-Up: Counting More in aid

This blog was first published on the EADI/ISS Development Research Blog Series, written by Oxfam’s Nicole Walshe and Anne Mai Baan. In our work to strengthen and support civic space worldwide (i.e. the space for freedoms of association, assembly and free expression) we often see that certain narratives are used to undermine the work of activists. Narratives – the collection

One of the briefings I’ve been developing for our new influencing course (see yesterday’s intro) is a guide to help people navigate the plethora of toolkits on influencing. Here’s my list – with a request for comments and additions. My overall impression (although this may just reflect my Oxfam background) is that there are loads of online guides to ‘outsider’

The Looting of Africa ht K. Diallo Human rights organising in Africa during a global pandemic. Write up of great lecture by my old friend Irungu Houghton with links to video and podcast. Also check out his book on Kenya: Dialogue and Dissent: A Constitution In Search Of A Country What all campaigners can learn from The Canary Craftivists. Nice

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In the second of their four-part blog series (first published on Global Policy), which seeks to spark new ways of thinking about digitally-mediated activism, Nina Newhouse and Charlie Batchelor (two of my LSE students from last year’s cohort), use Timms and Heimans’ New/Old Power framework to ask how activists can use the internet to achieve new forms of power and

This is the first of a four-part blog series first published on Global Policy, which seeks to spark new ways of thinking about digitally-mediated activism. Written by two of my LSE students from last year’s cohort, Nina Newhouse and Charlie Batchelor, it uses Timms and Heimans’ New/Old Power framework to interrogate power: asking how activists can use the internet to

It’s always a red letter day when a new paper from Graham Teskey drops. His most recent is Thinking and working politically: What have we learned since 2013? For those that don’t know him, Graham is a consummate insider-outsider within the aid sector – long stints at DFID (UK), DFAT (Australia) and now Abt (Management Consultants). From this vantage point

At what date will average UK persons’ 2022 emissions surpass annual emissions of other countries? Powerful number crunch/infographic on climate inequality from Euan Ritchie The Wordle craze is now spawning some (more) interesting mutuations (sorry, Covid language is hard to get away from these days). If you’re looking for a suitable timesuck, there’s an environmental version, c/o IIED, or try