Guest post from Niranjan J. Nampoothiri, who has just started as the Research Assistant on the Emergent Agency in a time of Covid project. Delighted to be working with you, Niranjan!   I have been following the literature on Covid-19 and civic space for several months now. One report that I was excited about, the annual People Power under Attack

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A very good paper on a fascinating and important topic, by Caroline Harper, Rachel Marcus, Rachel George, Sophia M. D’Angelo, Emma Samman, published by ODI and ALIGN. The research questions are ambitious: how gender norms have changed over the past quarter-century, what has supported and blocked changes to gender norms in a number of sectors, and how to ensure change is faster, and robust

Development speak: the gift that keeps giving COVID-19 as a ‘Critical Juncture’: A Scoping Review by John Twigg Why so many Syrian women get divorced when they move to western countries. Thought-provoking piece from Rola El-Husseini In 2015 Oxfam profiled 40 Sahrawi refugees 40 years after the Western Sahara conflict erupted. For Human Rights Day they caught up with several

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Researchers left 17,000 wallets on the streets of 355 cities, some empty, some with money. Contrary to the predictions of economists, people everywhere were more likely to return wallets with money in them. But rates did vary from country to country. Ht Ethan Mollick ‘Moving mountains’: How Pakistan’s ‘invisible’ women won workers’ rights (‘Bano is paid about 25 Pakistani rupees

I’m loving the theatre of the protests in Thailand. First the adoption of the Hunger Games’ three finger salute, which actually started in 2014, and was promptly banned by the military. In that earlier round of protest, popular culture figures from cartoon hamsters to the Harry Potter villain Lord Voldemort were all invoked. Now it’s the hour of the rubber

A plug for two rounds of online conversation taking place on Wednesday (2nd December) around the theme of ‘Emergent Agency in a Time of Covid’ The Emergent Agency in a Time of Covid project is definitely the most fun thing in my work at Oxfam right now. Why? First, the discussions so far have been fascinating (check out our webinar

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Maria Faciolince introduces one of her amazing resource lists. 25 November is the International Day to End Violence against Women, kicking off #16DaysofActivism. Once considered a private issue pertaining to ‘family matters’, now it is largely recognized as part of large-scale social issues and systemic oppressions. But to make sense of this day, we have to extend our gaze beyond

Covid bookshop ht Sony Kapoor The inequality of climate change. 1% of people cause half of global aviation emissions – new study ht Tim Gore I’m chairing a lecture by Nora Lustig on “Inequality in Latin America: Markets, Covid-19 and Policies” on Friday, 4-6pm UK time. Jean-Paul Faguet is discussant. Livestream here. You can catch up with previous speakers in