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Should I consider a PhD in International Development Studies?

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The 2020 UN General Assembly has just kicked off, marking a key highlight of the UN@75 year of celebration. This is the perfect time to share my review of Shirley Hazzard’s People in Glass Houses , the best book about the United Nations I have ever read. It started with a simple Tweet by writer Petina Gappah and over the summer I read Hazzard’s book based on her essays published in the New Yorker between 1964 and 1967. Yes, you read that right: Hazzard’s book, more a collection of loosely connected short stories than ‘a novel’ as the subtitle claims, is more than 50 years old. But what makes People in Glass Houses such a stellar literary contribution is that the poignant observations she shares through her stories are all but historical. Her observations on the human condition of bureaucratic ordering are timeless. These profound insights that the UN is unchangeable, that it is not a lack of money or the wrong state being in charge of a committee and that the promotion of a bright mi...
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Global Development Substacks I Like

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The other day a friend asked me about recommendations for development-themed Substacks and rather than responding to him directly, I decided to share my favorite "blogs-send-out-as-newsletters" resources on the blog... For many years a group of German media entrepreneurs has been awarding the Goldenen Blogger and one category they had for many year was "bloggers without a blog"-this is a bit how I feel about Substack and the concept of (mostly) long newsletters instead of traditional blogs. So which are some of my favorite writers and concepts then? UPDATE 30 MARCH 2025  Tomorrow Is Possible Frederik Matthys is a prolific development thinker working on the "future of development" (and we recently invited him to one of our MA Communication for Development classes which led to great discussions with the students...) Blue Helmets, Red Tape Eugene Chen's writing on the UN system, particularly its peacekeeping operations, is a go-to place for connoisseur...
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Handbook on Humanitarianism and Inequality - Chapter 35 - Archives and historical perspectives in researching humanitarianism

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Every two weeks I am going to feature one of the chapters of our Handbook on Humanitarianism and Inequality which was published in spring 2024.  This week we are taking a closer look at Chapter 35 - Archives and historical perspectives in researching humanitarianism - contributed by Katarzyna Nowak. From the introduction  This chapter deals with sources and methodology of researching and writing history of humanitarianism. Historical perspectives, to repeat after Eleanor Davey and Kim Scriven (2015) , do not simply offer lessons from the past but pose challenges to habitual ways of thinking, contributing to the critical reflection on humanitarian action. The chapter begins with discussing the state of field and challenges around researching and writing history of human-itarianism and inequality. Focusing in particular on the issue of sources, it treats archives as spaces of power and asks how the process of generating records reflects the existing systems of power and inequ...
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