Aidnography

Donald J. Nicolson’s Academic Conferences as Neoliberal Commodities is a short new book that addresses one of the favorite academic products researchers love to hate. Nicolson’s book offers a fresh and concise overview over the topic based on his own experiences primarily in the field of health science and additional interviews with a sample of academics from different disciplines. His “ exploratory examination ” (p.8) is structured along a fictitious conference proceedings table of content and in many ways he does take us on a journey to explore gatherings of academics in the neoliberal age. He starts with a short historical exploration into conferences and, at least for me, with a reminder that there really was a time when they fulfilled the expectation of “ intellectual communication (and) to enable people to present and discuss findings from research ” (p.5). Nicolson introduces his neoliberal framework early on, but for me it remains somewhat abstract throughout the book, but

Hi all, I'll keep it short and simple as I'm more than ready to leave the office this Friday afternoon...enjoy your readings! Development news: Humanitarian Dating; breaking the hunger cycle in Bangladesh; the limits of digital disaster response; stop giving ‘voice to voiceless’!; also stop ‘raising awareness’!; World Bank & behavior change; UNDP & innovation; ODI & influencing high-level panels; the WDR is great!; better peacebuilding; the end of aid’s golden age; Nepal shuns returning experts; the limits of hip-hop for social change.  Our digital lives: ‘Fearless Girl’ is fake corporate feminism; gender quotas push out mediocre men; #allmalepanels are bad; digital surveillance of women in Colombia. Publication: Labor migration and remittances in Nepal. Academia: What if sociologists influenced policy? Enjoy! Development news "Provide evidence", they said; "Show impact", they said; "Do #Rct ", they said; warning 4 #globald

Hi all, After a week spent mostly working from home, focusing on two research papers, I am happy to focus on 'lighter' writing in a way with the latest link review! Development news: Humanitarian access in South Sudan and Turkey/Syria; 360 degree immersion in Sudan; Sierra Leone’s unfair tax system; The struggles of Kenya’s middle-class; Garment production in capitalistic Myanmar; social relationships and evidence; responding to unsolicited feedback; #mediadev and accountability; Can Chicago learn from Bogota? Reflections on traveling, volunteering and photographing abroad. Our digital lives: Lovewashing is the new greenwashing; avoiding #allmalepanel (except when American political consultants meet); the happiness industry is a burden. Publications: Improving aid HR; studying the datafied society; the Internet as history; big data and sexual surveillance. Academia: What do Economists actually know? (It’s a long-read, not a rant!); women and scientific authorship; higher e

Last week the UNOG Staff Coordinating Council shared the results of its 2017 Global Staff Satisfaction Survey 2017 , “in which 4,000 of you took part last week, representing ten percent of staff.” As a social science researcher I can confirm that this is a very sad case study of “how not to present survey results” and clearly not worthy of the UN system, its staff and the important issues that are raised in the report. Some of my concerns are simply about the poor presentation of findings (in the sense that most advanced undergrad students of pretty much any discipline should know better), but there are more concerning issues with the results that border on unethical (social) science research practices. First of all, sharing an unedited 200 page pdf-document that does neither list the questions that were asked in the survey nor includes basic demographic data, e.g. distribution of respondents along organizations, gender, age, country, employment level etc. makes it difficult to assess

Hi all, Lots of great development and #ICT4D stuff this week! I am also a bit tired after a long week of meetings-so no witty introduction ;)! Development news: Global Fund’s leadership drama; how to address inequality in Indonesia? Cobalt mining in DRC; South Sudan-segregation through aid? Afghanistan, the birthplace of drone warfare; hacking development-a manifesto; messaging apps and disaster response; effective feedback mechanisms; the digital development glossary; MSF staff reflects on burn-out; re-imaging volunteerism in Australia; voluntourism in Kenya; what are good exit strategies? Aid work and capitalism.  Our digital lives: Who talks on US television? Instagramming food and perpetuating stereotypes; Zuckerberg read through the lens of anthropology.  Publications: Digital development in Africa; Gendered (in)securities in South Sudan Academia: In defense of the lecture; the Oxford degree that runs the UK  Enjoy! New from aidnography Men Engaging in the Gender Equalit