In their final instalment on Oxfam’s Inspiring Radically Better Futures project, Irene Guijt and Ruth Mayne summarize the main findings. We thank the inspired, courageous and determined people involved in the Inspiring Better Futures case studies who have shown that radically better futures are within reach. Many people around the world have generously given their time and contributed to the

In their second post on Oxfam’s Inspiring Futures project, Irene Guijt and Ruth Mayne nerd out on the methodology. If hope is stronger when anchored in evidence, what does it take to create that evidence base? There were plenty of head scratching moments involved in answering our main question: What evidence exists that transformative and inclusive change at scale is

Irene Guijt and Ruth Mayne introduce ‘Inspiring Radically Better Futures’, a new Oxfam research programme. With COP26 looming, everyone is hoping again. We hope that world leaders will make the bold decisions needed to reduce the scale of inevitable climate change. But what Sarah Palin once memorably called ‘that hopey changey stuff’ has gotten a hard rap recently. Take Greta

The political economy of UK aid ht Lee Crawfurd James Putzel and I have been having fun organizing the LSE’s Friday afternoon lecture series, ‘Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking and Practice’. Ha-Joon Chang was brilliant on ‘the political economy of Parasite (the movie)’ with the Squid Game thrown in. Take your pick from student write-ups, podcast or Youtube. This

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Guest post by Melanie Kramers, strategic advisor to the CEO, Oxfam GB I don’t know about you, but my eco anxiety has been soaring to record highs with each report of our impending doom in the run-up to the Glasgow Cop26 climate summit. But I found some glimmers of hope in a recent Oxfam-convened discussion that squarely focused on solutions. First

Building on Elrha’s recent learning paper about the role of evidence in scaling humanitarian innovations, Abigail Taylor outlines how Make Music Matter has used evidence to enable adoption of its innovative Healing in Harmony programme… Proving that a new idea or approach works is, sadly, not enough to ensure it is widely picked up. Innovators must follow up research activities

Women, Voice and Power, Oxfam’s new paper on ‘transformative feminist leadership’ exemplifies why I love working for NGOs, but also why it can get a bit irksome, especially if you’re a wordsmith. Let’s start with the good stuff. The 7 page Exec Sum (the full report weighs in at 45 pages) is stuffed full with great literature summaries, case studies,

Extreme multi-stakeholder consultation… ht Richard Cunliffe The Data Manipulation Scandal that could topple the heads of the World Bank & IMF. Superb analysis of the Doing Business scandal by Justin Sandefur. Should be required reading for public policy/international development students. It also shows the extraordinary power of league tables in advocacy How to Destroy a Country: Does Ethiopia Have a

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Gave my annual lecture on ‘research for policy impact’ with a bunch of typically super-smart LSE Masters students this week from its new School of Public Policy, hosted by Lloyd Gruber. The Q&A at the end is always brilliant (if occasionally terrifying), and this year, the question that really got my juices flowing was from Laura Denham, with a similar question

My Oxfam colleague and regular FP2P contributor Max Lawson (right) sends out a weekly summary of his reading on inequality (he leads Oxfam’s advocacy work on it). They’re great, and Max has opened his mailing list up to the anyone who’s interested – just email max.lawson@oxfam.org, with ‘subscribe’ in the subject line. Here’s his latest effort (and thanks to Rakesh Rajani for suggesting the