Aidnography

Hi all, After a lot of food for the body for most who celebrate Thanksgiving, here's your weekly food for mind & soul ;)! Development news: Protracted conflict & lives in South Sudan; Radi-Aid award finalists; reparations as radical philanthropy in Africa; governance (un)reform in Nepal; innovations in bureaucracy; communicating a project evaluation from Uganda; successful community-driven activism in Malawi; pity, politeness & charity communications. Our digital lives: Better (humanitarian) news consumption; self-care beyond bath salts & chocolate; the sound & power of algorhythmic governance. Publications: An ethnography of social media in Trinidad; fixing the journalist-fixer relationship; gender equality in higher education. Academia: De-colonising education in South Africa; the utility of blogging & blogs in #highered. Enjoy! New from aidnography The complexities of the ‘lifting people out of poverty’ narrative It was probably Dina Pomeranz’ lon...

If you do Twitter right (full disclosure: I also follow Only in Russia and The Dodo ) it can be an awesome space for global development debates. There are a lot of smart people in my regular feed that share interesting, important empirical insights into development research e.g. Dina Pomeranz, Alice Evans, Maya Forstater, David Evans, or Justin Sandefur. Hey, I'm doing a podcast, discussing fascinating research from 2017 on global development, inequality, & social change Suggestions welcome! — Alice Evans (@_alice_evans) November 18, 2017 Making sense of the #Paradisepapers : are we drawing the right conclusions from this 'scandal'? https://t.co/5yjQOPO6V7 — Maya Forstater (@MForstater) November 17, 2017 7 new papers on governance, bureaucracy, social capital, and economic development https://t.co/DTY3FbM00O pic.twitter.com/HA96OUnnO7 — David Evans (@tukopamoja) November 22, 2017 1/ I've been avoiding Liberia education drama for a bit, bu...

Hi all, It has been a loooong week-as you probably guessed by the delayed publication of this week's review. However, as always there is plenty of food for thought on everything from war crimes to labeling a 'hut', from sexual violence to empowering stories featuring women from Kenya and Bolivia, from misguided stereotypes about India to revolutionary global ecosocialism, from laptop humanitarians to civil society claqueurs, from Bono to Louise Linton! Enjoy! New from aidnography Blogging and curating content as strategies to decolonize development studies In our crowded digital lives this means that curation and facilitation will become more important skills for those working in academia because there is already an abundance of diverse material from many sources. Strengthening connections and discussions, often with the aid of technological tools, thereby creating a global understanding of ‘development’ from social movements to debating inequalities and power/powerless...

Sussex University recently organized a Decolonising Development Studies event. I submitted a short input for discussion, but unfortunately was unable to attend the event in person. Below is a slightly revised version of my input on how development blogging and curating innovative development-related digital content has played a small, yet important role in decolonizing my approach to teaching and communicating development studies. Blogging and curating content as strategies to diversify discussions and communicate development differently I started my development blog Aidnography in 2011 and it has since become an integral part of my teaching, research and broader engagement to communicate development issues. The practice of regular blogging and curating content has become an opportunity to shift foci from traditional locations of where and how development is communicated – and who is in charge and part of the story. While I am aware that as a white European man I have to be particula...

Hi all, Not much to report-the first part of the semester is done and lost of assignments are ready for reading and grading... Development news: Humanitarian Evidence Week; Red Cross fraud in West Africa; why development finance institutions use tax havens ; failed infrastructure projects in Ghana; local aid workers in Kenya; Oxfam & the aid industry's sexual harassment problem; how to fix Afghanistan? Inside Eritrea; Thousand Currents; Bright Magazine; development economics research; using social media for development research. Our digital lives: The social cost of digital disruption in Nigeria; sexist travel Instagram. Publications: Local aid workers in the Philippines. Academia: Developing countries & predatory publishing ; tech adoption in the classroom; open access fosters engagement. Enjoy! New from aidnography Dirk Niebel became an arms lobbyist afterwards & is still quite an embarrassment 4 German #globaldev #aid community https://t.co/uEIn7K2i58...