
November 30, 2023
Got a grilling from an unusual audience (for me) last week. 100+ senior military officers (colonels and above) from 40 countries, attending what amounts to a UK-sponsored âmilitary Mastersâ (my words) â a year-long course on strategy for future leaders. Canât be more specific as it was Chatham House rule. My task was to introduce them to the wonderful world
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UN Women makes Norm Change central to its mission
November 28, 2023
Bafflingly, I was recently invited to an online âExpert Group Meetingâ to help UN Women flesh out a really important new strategy â making norm change central to its role. This from the Concept Note for the session: âIn 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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Links I Liked
November 27, 2023
Oxfam got a lot of coverage for its new report (with the Guardian among others) on the links between economic and carbon inequality â i.e. the carbon footprints of the extreme rich. A cartoon strip from the wonderful First Dog on the Moon definitely helped. Whole strip here As did this powerful graphic from Mumbai âSomethingâs different about the reaction
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Development Nutshell, (20m). Audio roundup of blogs on From Poverty to Power, w/b 13th and 20th November
November 25, 2023
Links I Liked Voices of Gaza What do 70 Masters students from around the world want to campaign on? What to read on the new UK White Paper on International Development? What can we learn from looking at the overlaps between innovations in ways of doing research and neglected development issues?
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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 Mexicoâs Estefanie Hechenberger, a small penny dropped â the value of looking at
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What to read on the new UK White Paper on International Development?
November 21, 2023
When I joined Oxfam in the mid-noughties, it was a time of Big Documents: The World Development Report, The Human Development Report etc etc. At regular intervals, the latest tome would thud onto my desk and require study, debate, lots of panels and press commentary. The tomes combined in-depth research and narrative â lots of narrative – about the nature
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What do 70 Masters students from around the world want to campaign on?
November 17, 2023
Iâve just spent a busy few days giving feedback on studentsâ proposals for their assignments in my activism class at the LSE, which I teach along with Tom Kirk. For this they have to pick a topic that they feel strongly about, and design an influencing strategy to achieve a positive change. They have to work through the course content
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Voices of Gaza: ‘They destroyed the smell of Jasmine, the memories, the love’
November 15, 2023
Oxfam has been receiving increasingly desperate voicenotes from staff and partners inside the Gaza strip. Here are some edited transcripts and links to give you a sense of the suffering that is unfolding: The Oxfam Partner Eman Shanan founded Aid and Hope in 2009, to support women with cancer in Gaza. Oxfam has been funding Aid and Hope through its
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Links I Liked
November 13, 2023
Going from silly to deadly serious in descending order. Apologies for the jarring cognitive dissonance, but it’s an accurate reflection of my timeline these days. What’s your favourite band name from the 1978 Scarfolk Youth Indoctrination Festival? For Adam Sharp, it’s a three-way tie between Arrogant Sandwiches, Pavlov & the Dribblers, and Hitler Likes Twix âCan we change the world?
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Development Nutshell, bumper edition (30m). Audio roundup of October/November blogs so far on From Poverty to Power
November 11, 2023
Why did the Street Movements of the 2010s fail? What Tactics are most Effective in Non-Violent Protest? Think tanks are struggling. They need to change. Whoop Whoop. Just made a personal Webpage it’s super easy. RIP Saleemul Huq, a true climate hero Why a âhumanitarian pauseâ or âhumanitarian corridorsâ are simply not the answer in Gaza Pracademics: just a clunky
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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), whoâs 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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Why a âhumanitarian pauseâ or âhumanitarian corridorsâ are simply not the answer in Gaza
November 6, 2023
This post by Oxfamâs Richard Stanforth and Magnus Corfixen went up on Oxfamâs Views and Voices blog on Friday Why are Oxfam and other humanitarian organisations not welcoming calls for corridors, pauses and so-called âsafe zonesâ to address the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza? Richard Stanforth and Magnus Corfixen explain â and set out why a ceasefire is the only credible
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