The academic roller coaster. ht Jay van Bavel Two interesting posts on the slow demise of personal blogging. Tobias Denskus on Are personal #globaldev blogs a thing of the past? Mark Carrigan on ‘Are personal academic blogs a thing of the past? I’m starting to feel like the last of the Mohicans on this one…. The Ukraine: ‘The most obvious

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Depressed by the zombification of Britain’s official aid system, I am looking further afield for inspiration/new thinking and came across this recent paper on a series of innovations at USAID. Larry Garber, Gretchen King and Karen Hirschfeld looked at 4 initiatives: co-creation; engaging new and non-traditional actors via the New Partnerships Initiative (NPI); convening power; and integrated programming (apologies for

I’ve been catching up on the news after a week away in Amman running the first pilot training session in our ‘Influencing for Senior Leaders’ course (huge fun, blogs to follow). Among the less enjoyable updates was the latest evidence for the wanton vandalism being inflicted on the UK’s aid programme. Two sets of contrasting provisional stats for 2021 were

Guest post by Naomi Hossain & Patta Scott-Villiers In March FAO’s global food price index jumped by 17% to a level unprecedented in its 30-year history. The food riots predicted by the head of the World Trade Organization have already kicked off in Sri Lanka and Indonesia. Deadly fuel riots in Peru, rising discontent in Kenya and the rising price

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One lesson of recent times is that countries’ global reputations often have little to do with their underlying realities. The Netherlands is not all a happy liberal paradise of coffee houses and cyclists. And Brazil is not all sex, carnival and footballing genius. In the case of Brazil, the world has woken up to this through the rise and chaotic

Lisa Denney tries to restore a little cautious optimism to last week’s Eeyore-ish takes (by me and The Asia Foundation) on the nature and impact of TWP Is thinking and working politically (TWP) on life support? Duncan suggested as much in a recent post.  But a webinar on localisation convened by the TWP Community of Practice offers an alternative, in

Guest post by Justin Derbyshire, CEO of HelpAge International  The war in Ukraine has destroyed everybody’s lives regardless of who they are. We have watched in horror as children have been passed over heads onto trains, at fathers left to fight, and a steady trail of exhausted, traumatised people of all ages fleeing further West  But it is an uncomfortable

‘When you enter this library you are a scientist, you are an explorer, you are a reader, you are important, you are loved’. Heart warming letter to Texas school librarian Amy Milstead. Click and read it all – it’s worth it Two massacres, continents apart: ‘in the central Malian town of Moura mercenaries from the Kremlin-linked Wagner Group are accused

Links I Liked Poo, Periods and Priorities: what does research tell us about the different views of practitioners, populations and academics about WASH? Second (and Third) Thoughts on Adaptive Management and Thinking and Working Politically What does Civil Society think of Adaptive Management? Not that much, it turns out. 

Nicola Nixon, Kim McQuay, Peter Yates, Sumaya Saluja and Su Lae Yi, all of The Asia Foundation, continue our posts questioning the impact of the whole Adaptive Management/ Thinking and Working Politically Thing (I did my bit yesterday). Throughout 2021, we spent many hours talking with civil society organizations about adaptive management. We engaged with over 100 civil society organizations