Aidnography

Dear all, There was a simple reason why there was a short hiatus in the link review last week and I wish I could insert some fancy policy-influencing, mind-changing education or undercover field research event here. Truth is, I accidentally deleted the document where I keep my links. I know...maybe next time I will make up something fancy instead ;)! This week features snark on development industry forecasts and celebrity engagement and more serious posts on the limitations of humanitarian aid, the gang war in Colombia, equipment graveyards in low-resource medical systems, complexity thinking 'on the ground', ICT4D in Uganda, storytelling for social change & tips from a novelist on how to be discoverable in the virtual world beyond your written product. Enjoy! New on aidnography Getting ready for #smwcph, Social Media Week in Copenhagen Actually, Social Media Week is wrapping up today, but we had a really good time yesterday at UN City in Copenhagen for Örecomm's Com

Nick Kristof’s latest New York Times column with the telling title  ‘ Smart Minds, Slim Impact ’ in the print edition about the disappearance of public intellectuals and need for better academic policy advice is being criticized by a few academic colleagues.  Ed Carr’s reply already highlights many of the problematic assumptions around academia, academic writing and the role of ‘the professor’ that Nick Kristof introduces, but there is one issue I feel deserves further attention: The reduction of academic outreach and public engagement to ‘policy advice’. I find Nick Kristof’s approach rather naïve and I cannot honestly believe that he really thinks that ‘better’ policy advice leads to better political decision-making and policies. But let's approach this issue by first looking at changing nature of policy-advice in the field of development, how it collides with increasing demands on ‘impact ’ and the many ways professors already engage to educate students and engage with socie

Dear all, The Social Media Week in Copenhagen is about to start and I will be involved in two very interesting and also very different events on Tuesday and Thursday, the 18th and 20th. Since there is a chance that new visitors will stumble across the blog, I want to welcome you warmly by providing some background information on my recent projects, research and teaching to give you a better sense of the content behind the short and condensed presentations.   Social Media and International Development - Communication for Social Change in the Digital Age The abstract does not adequately reflect what Roskilde University researcher Lene Bull Christiansen , start-up entrepreneur Jakob Vahr Svennignsen and me are going to talk about. Essentially, we are introducing our GoComm (#GoComm) initiative for the Öresund region. A recent event in Copenhagen sparked some initial reflections on the challenges of Technology for Development (T4D) that GoComm can hopefully explore in more detai

Dear all, We had a great two-day seminar in Malmö last Friday and Saturday and it was fantastic that a many ComDev students participated in lively debates on-site, online and very often in-between. In some ways, I am glad that this great seminar interfered with the weekly link review. So just treat it as starting point into a new week with some 'fresh' links added over the weekend. They finally made the satirical cartoon 'There You Go' into a movie; more on the state of development policy and practice from a U.S. foreign policy perspective as well as from Haiti, the Philippines & DR Congo-time for a 'boring development manifesto'?; critical reflection on HRW as part of the U.S. foreign policy think tank industry; better volontourism in Cambodia; better engagement of white feminists and good reads for aspiring humanitarians. In Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology goes open access and Academia is partially and literally, on 'organisational bullshit' to