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Should I consider a PhD in International Development Studies?

After the Economist’s piece on the (non-)value of doing a PhD and some comments later (e.g. Prometheus doesn't read the Economist (I like the slightly cynical dichotomy between ‘civilians’ and the ‘academic insiders) or the ' 100 Reasons NOT to Go to Graduate School ' (they are only halfway through so check it out regularly in the future...) I had an interesting conversation with a prospective PhD student a few days ago. This was not the first time that I had been approached about doing a PhD and I always try to be as frank as possible, even playing the ‘devil’s advocate’ when it comes to the complicated ‘should I or shouldn’t I?’ decision-making process. At the end of our conversation I sat down and tried to summarize a few important and generic points from the point of view of doing a PhD in Development Studies and in the UK . I understand that every case is different and involves a range of motives, options and rationales, but there a few important questions and t...
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What is the future of global development Think Tanks?

As a year of multiple crises is coming to a close, I am a bit surprised that we have not heard more about the crisis of Think Tanks.  The UN system is in crisis, global academia and philanthropy for sure as well and listing my collection of “the end of USAID” articles probably deserves its own blog post…so where does that leave global development Thinks Tanks?  At the very least there are some interesting developments in policy-making, academia, media and communication that will likely have an impact on the traditional set-up of how Think Tanks will (share their) work in the future. Many of these developments are not new or  “Trump”-in fact I found an old post from January 2019 that asked Can you imagine a world without Think Tanks?  (the promised follow-up post never materialized though...). But that was also before culture wars and AI... Culture wars and the end of evidence-based policy-making As mind-bogging as the decline of evidence-based development policy-mak...
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Fordlandia - a development review

I just finished reading Greg Grandin’s excellent book ‘ Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City’ . The synopsis from Amazon gives you a good overview over the contents of the book: Proving that truth can indeed be stranger than fiction, Fordlandia is the story of Henry Ford's ill-advised attempt to transform raw Brazilian rainforest into homespun slices of Americana. With sales of his Model-T booming, the automotive tycoon saw an opportunity to expand his reach further by exploiting a downtrodden Brazilian rubber industry. His vision, the laughably-named Amazonian outpost of Fordlandia, would become an enviable symbol of efficiency and mark the Ford Motor Company as a player on the global stage. Or so he thought. With thoughtful and meticulous research, author Greg Grandin explores the astounding oversights (no botanists were consulted to confirm the colony's agricultural viability) and painful arrogance (little thought was paid to how nativ...
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Why Save The Children’s Global Legacy Award to Tony Blair matters for C4D

Addendum 26 November: As the story unfolds, a new post: Learning organization #fail: Save The Children’s PR to defend Blair is almost worse than award itself I only read about Save the Children’s (STC) Global Legacy award to Tony Blair today and was surprised that it has not made bigger waves in the virtual development discussion spaces: The controversial former Prime Minster received the Global Legacy Award at the Save the Children Illumination Gala 2014, which was held at The Plaza in New York City. The star-studded event boasted a guest list featuring Save the Children President and CEO Carolyn Miles, acting couple Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner and Twilight actress Dakota Fanning – as well as the much-loved collie dog. (…) A spokesman said Blair had been chosen for the award on account of his work while serving as Prime Minster, including setting up the Department for International Development and hosting two G8 summits. You surely need a bit of selective memory to just...
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Lords of Poverty (book review)

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Unusual times require unusual readings and I finally found the time to read Graham Hancock’s Lords of Poverty-The power, prestige, and corruption of the international aid business . I had always thought of Lords of Poverty as the source of Ross Coggins’ famous The Development Set poem, but it is not so I finally had to turn my attention to the remaining 200 pages of his book… Similar to Cassens’ Does Aid Work? or Linear’s Zapping the Third World , Hancock’s book, first published in 1989, fits into an emerging discourse around exposing failed development aid at the end of the 1980s in in the style of mixing journalism, polemic exposure, a linear narrative of wasting taxpayers’ money topped off with a good dose of bureaucracy bashing. And if you think ‘well, that sounds an awful lot like the Daily Mail ’s coverage of aid 30 years later’ you are pretty much bang on the money! All jokes aside, this makes the book such an important and useful contribution to the ‘aid does not work’ ca...
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