Aidnography

Business Week cover from 2005 on "Blogs will change your business" Mark Carrigan recently asked this question about personal academic blogs on the LSE Impact of Science blog and it inspired me to think a little bit more about the state of personal blogging in the international/global development arena. I share Mark's positive sentiments about blogging and it has guided my own writing experiences for more than a decade now: Blogging has been the central means through which I’ve developed a distinctive outlook as a researcher, providing me with an open-ended invitation to reflect on what I’ve been reading, analysing, organising and teaching. I’ve been doing it for so long that I find it hard to imagine what it would like to be an academic without a blog. As early as 2012 I started to reflect on the practice of blogging in the #globaldev arena: Development blogging-How to have fun, avoid disappointment & be a strategic writer , culminating in a post from 2018 about

Hi all, A nice potpourri of #globaldev-related readings is served once again (before a short Easter break next week) & it takes from the Mount Kenya Safari Club in the 1960s to today's five-star hotels in Qatar, from Canada all across the globe to the courtrooms of the Pacific-and in-between we deconstruct discourses around 'adaptive management' + 'trust-based philanthropy'! My quote of the week One respondent in Les Cayes told us, “We don’t want to be made into victims for a sack of rice,” alluding to the fact that often the effort of knowing about, registering for, and accessing aid in Haiti’s south can be dangerous, degrading, and barely worth the goods provided – a bottle of oil here, a bag of rice there. (There’s a wide gap between aid’s promise and reality, Haitians say) Development news Haunting image of Kamloops residential school memorial named World Press Photo of the Year "I could almost hear the quietness in this photograph, a quiet moment of g

Hi all, This week's review returns with classic topics-from charity funding in the US, to humanitarian crises in Myanmar & Syria, women's empowerment in Malawi, uneven development in PNG + challenges doing (anti-racist) trainings & mentoring well; the hype around tech conferences, new open access research articles & reflections on the state of development studies wrap up this newsletter! Please note that I will take a short break from the weekly round-up next week as I should be boarding my first flight since February 2020 & travel to Berlin for a board meeting of a great German global internship alumni program ! My quote of the week The programs require time and commitment, and cohorts find themselves brainstorming a more equitable future among themselves versus what’s actually needed: for marginalized groups to pervade and redefine the upper echelons of power and funding. In some cases, the training programs coming my way are led by people with a fraction of t

Hi all, We (me & imaginary editorial team ;) are back with #globaldev news from Yemen, Ethiopia & DRC, more insights into the UK's decline in #globaldev leadership & much more-including an archeological gem on participatory photography from 2009 & more recent finds from the archive on aid worker salary gap, not sending stuff to Africa & the Pepsi-fication of dissent! Enjoy! My quote of the week Being uprooted during my childhood, my identity is a complex weave with strands of multiple origins. The easiest identity to take on would have been that of being human or a global citizen, but society always finds a way to compartmentalize your identity and attach meaning to it . (I Was 13 When I Fled War in Tigray. This Is What Conflict Has Done to My Home.) Development news U.N. raises less than a third of $4.27 bln sought for Yemen to avoid starvation The United Nations on Wednesday received only $1.3 billion in pledges towards a $4.27 billion aid plan for war-torn Ye

Hi all, This week there are important, powerful stories from Malawi, Yemen, India, Brazil, Kenya, Saudi-Arabia/Nepal, the US & Canada as well insights into Think Tanks in Washington, localizing a movement, Web3 for good/'good' + accents in #globaldev work! Happy reading! Development news Malawian students face yet another setback after tropical storm Ana The storm affected 398,908 learners from 476 schools and, according to Dakamau, nearly 50% of the learners in his district have been forced out of school. “The learners have lost most of their school materials like text and notebooks and the situation is made worse because some schools have been completely damaged by the floods,” he said. Steve Sharra, an education specialist with African Institute for Development Policy, said the destruction that the storm had on permanent school structures has further reduced the number of classes in the country. Madalitso Wills Kateta for DevEx with a powerful story on the climate-disas