When to (not) ask a question. Thanks Makarand for this great addition to last week’s top tips for seminars ‘NIMBYism is just the lefty-approved version of a border wall.’ Bit of gentle cage-rattling in this thoughtful interview with Oxfam America Director of Campaigns Ben Grossman Cohen Yes, British arms are killing innocent civilians in Yemen. Why is the UK government

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If you hang around conversations on ‘thinking and working politically’, as I do, you’ll hear a lot of references to ‘Political Settlements’ as it’s grown up, more academic, but sometimes incomprehensible cousin. As this new book’s blurb declares ‘At its most ambitious, ‘political settlements analysis’ (PSA) promises to explain why conflicts occur and states collapse, the conditions for their successful

In recent years, Oxfam’s been doing some pioneering work on the ‘care economy’, aka the bit Adam Smith left out (example here and here). My uninformed mental image of this had been all about the role of parents, generally mothers, in running the household and bringing up the kids, so I was struck by a recent Economist piece on the

After the Zoom years, lots of us are now back in the lecture theatre/other forms of real life contact and exchange. Intoxicating, in many ways. But I’m also struck that it feels the same, but different, to the pre-Covid world, so I thought I’d jot down a few thoughts about getting the most out of these encounters, partly for readers,

Crisis as Opportunity. Big oil making out like bandits right now, acc to FT ‘Blogs and social media have sparked a perpetual open and public conversation around new ideas, methods, pre-prints, funding, ethics, and technology that ranges across the research lifecycle.’ Andy Tattersall argues that research bids should include 5% for comms. Checking in with Joseph Stiglitz on the state

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What is the point of all the noise on human rights violations, all that ‘speaking truth to power’ to repressive regimes who don’t listen, if no-one is ever brought to justice? When all those lawyers, Amnesty reports, email campaigns and UN treaties simply bounce off the brute realities of national power? Kate Cronin-Furman’s intriguing new book uses a political economy

Thanks to Ivan Campbell for alerting me to this really good (and brief) paper from Peace Direct, looking at useful roles for INGOs as intermediaries, as they seek to localize and/or step back from direct implementation. Edited down version below. In recent years, there has been growing scrutiny of the largely unchanged role that INGOs have played in humanitarian, development

Check out this 7m video of my recent trip to Papua New Guinea. It was commissioned by The Voice Inc, one of the partner organizations for the Building Community Engagement in Papua New Guinea (BCEP) programme I’m working with in PNG. I have to say, I’ve never been the subject of anything so slick and well made, (my wife Cathy

Singhsburys v Morrisinghs…… A tragedy pushed to the shadows: the truth about China’s Cultural Revolution. Evocative long read from Tania Branigan, excerpted from her new book. Top Oxfam job: Head of Washington DC office, influencing the IMF, World Bank etc. Following the excellent Nadia Daar. Deadline 29th Jan Governance diaries: a method that brings together the strengths of ethnographic, longitudinal,

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