In this episode, One World Together's co-founder Nicola Banks and Community Space Development Lead Asma Bham speak with one of their community partners: Lwanga Bwalya of Play it Forward Zambia. Lwanga dives into the complexities of navigating projects within the current funding system, as well as his own experiences with community-led initiatives b…

Following the launch of the Sustainable Forest Transitions project at Manchester Museum on the 6th March 2024, we bring you a new episode featuring the event's opening remarks and the incredible panel discussion that took place. In this episode, you will hear from Kieran Dodds, Polyanna da Conceição Bispo, Felipe Melo, Adithya Pradeep and Rose Prit…

Oliver Bakewell, Impact Director at GDI, discusses migration practices along the Ethiopia-Sudan border with Kiya Gezahegne, an ethnographic researcher from the University of Addis Ababa. Kiya and Oliver have worked together on multiple projects exploring local migration realities and policy effects. In this episode, they draw interesting observatio…

In this episode, PhD researcher Sandy Nofyanza kicks off a new series of podcasts linked to the GDI's Sustainable Forest Transitions project. Sandy chats to Dr Sreeja Jaiswal, Humboldt Foundation’s International Climate Protection Postdoc Fellow at the University of Heidelberg, about challenges associated with forest restoration efforts and debates…

In this episode, Francisco V. Ayala discusses his new book, Cash Transfers for Poverty Reduction: An International Operational Guide (Routledge, 2023), co-authored with GDI’s David Lawson. The book offers the first systematic discussion of the design and implementation of cash transfer programmes, including practical guidance for students and key s…

Selim Iyidirli hosts a conversation around One World Together and its model for Global Citizenship with Jon Alexander, author of Citizens: How the Key to Fixing Everything is All of Us, and Nicola Banks and Chibwe Masabo Henry, Co-Founders and Chief Stewards of One World Together. Have a listen, and then come and join their wave of change! More abo…

The division of the world into ‘developing’ and ‘developed’ countries has grown increasingly problematic in the past decades. Nonetheless, it remains embedded in legal documents, foreign policy discourse, and colloquial use. In this lecture, Dr Deborah explores this complexity by unpacking the different ways in which the ‘developing’ label is used …

This episode comes from the African Cities Research Centre, based at the Global Development Institute. Urban reform coalitions can play a critical role in building inclusive, sustainable and productive cities. Made up of diverse stakeholders who collaborate to achieve common goals, these coalitions can work to strengthen relationships between disad…

The latest episode of our podcast brings together Sam Hickey, President of the Development Studies Association UK, Heloise Weber, President of the Development Studies Association Australia and special guest Winnie Mitullah from IDS, University of Nairobi. The three discuss the relevance of development studies in the current climate. Sam Hickey is P…

In this episode Elisa Gambino is joined by Kathy Dodworth. They discuss Kathy’s new book, Legitimation as Political Practice, her transition from working at an NGO to academia and the idea of the non-state Dr Kathy Dodworth is a Wellcome Trust Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Edinburgh's Centre for African Studies. Her current fellowship cr…

People in South Sudan have experienced decades of forced displacement and cross-border mobility, resulting in families split across the country and neighbouring Sudan, Kenya, Ethiopia and Uganda. According to the United Nations as of 2021, more than four million South Sudanese citizens were displaced either internally or internationally. Samuel Hal…

In this episode Tanja Müller talks to Lisa Ann Richey about her career and her recent book, Batman Saves the Congo: How Celebrities Disrupt the Politics of Development. Lisa Ann Richey is Professor of Globalisation and Development Studies at the Department of Management, Society and Communication Copenhagen Business School. Her research looks at va…

In this episode Tom Goodfellow and Pritish Behuria discuss Tom's career and his new book, Politics and the Urban Frontier: Transformation and Divergence in Late Urbanizing East Africa. Despite the rise of global technocratic ideals of city-making, cities around the world are not merging into indistinguishable duplicates of one another. In fact, as …

This episode comes from the African Cities Research Consortium podcast. Diana Mitlin talks to Ezana Haddis Weldeghebrael about her new paper on how reform coalitions can contribute to inclusive equitable urban change in the global South, her experiences of working with coalitions in Africa and Asia, the future of the urban reform agenda in African …

This episode comes from the African Cities Research Consortium podcast. “It’s not our data as SDI, it’s not ACRC data, it’s not their data. It’s the community’s data. So you have to have that understanding that, at the end of the day, it has to benefit the community.” In this episode, Miriam Maina talks to Charity Mumbi and Jane Wairutu from SDI-Ke…

In the latest Global Development Institute podcast Amani Abou-Zeid, African Union Commissioner in charge of infrastructure, energy and ICT, talks to Seth Schindler about energy security and infrastructural development in Africa. Ahead of COP27 in Egypt, they reflect on Africa’s energy “evolution” in relation to climate change, why integration is ke…

Development studies often focuses on the negative: constraints, challenges, negative impacts, etc. But what if we could use new digital datasets to identify positive deviants: outlier individuals, households, districts and others that outperform their peers in achievement of development goals? In this episode, Basma Albanna and Richard Heeks discus…

In this episode, Stefano Ponte talks to Aarti Krishnan about his research into sustainability, the wine and seafood value chains in South Africa and his recent book Business, Power and Sustainability in a World of Global Value Chains Dr Stefano Ponte is a Professor of International Political Economy at Copenhagen Business School. His research looks…

In the second of our Shifting South series, Stephanie Barrientos talks to Margareet Visser and Maggie Opondo. They reflect on the project and their research into horticultural value chains. Shifting South investigated: the rise of South-South trade through regional and domestic markets what this means for decent work – especially women in precariou…

In the first of our Shifting South series, Stephanie Barrientos talks to Khalid Nadvi and Shane Godfrey. They reflect on the project and their research into regional garment value chains, and decent work in Southern Africa. Shifting South investigated: the rise of South-South trade through regional and domestic markets what this means for decent wo…

In the latest episode of the GDI podcast, Professor Stefan Dercon talks to Dr Sophie van Huellen. They discuss Stefan's new book, "Gambling on Development: why some countries win and others lose", his recent departure from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, and his advice to academics wanting to work with civil servants and policymak…

GDI’s Resources, Environment, and Development research group have recently organised a series of talks on ‘Red Talks: on the Politics of Resources, Environment and Development' The first event welcomed Dr Maria Christina Fragkou, an environmental scientist currently working as an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at the University …

While the Covid-19 pandemic has caused enormous devastation and disruption in health, social and economic terms, the remarkably quick development of Covid-19 vaccines is an enormous achievement. Yet despite frequent statements that “it's not over anywhere, until it’s over everywhere”, the distribution of Covid-19 vaccines has been grossly inequitab…

Yeling Tan discusses her book, Disaggregating China, Inc: State Strategies in the Liberal Economic Order. China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001 represented an historic opportunity to peacefully integrate a rising economic power into the international order based on market-liberal rules. Yet rising economic tensions between the US …

This podcast focuses on development politics at the United Nations, particularly the period of the so-called New International Economic Order (NIEO) in the 1970s. The NIEO was an effort by Third World countries to pursue a reform agenda that combined global redistribution from North to South with state-led developmentalism at the national level. By…

To mark the launch of The Routledge Handbook of Global Development, we have recorded 3 podcasts with the core editorial team.In the final episode, core-editor Kearrin Sims sat down with Albert Salamanca and Pichamon Yeophantong, section editors for the book’s section ‘Sustainabilty and Environment’.Kearrin Sims is a lecturer in Development Studies …

In this second podcast to mark the launch of The Routledge Handbook of Global Development, Professor Jonathan Rigg sits down with Dr Nicola Banks, the section editor of 'Game Changers of global development?', to find out what makes a 'game changer' and how development pedagogy can learn from them.Jonathan Rigg is Professor of Development Geography …

To mark the launch of The Routledge Handbook of Global Development, we have recorded 3 podcasts with the core editorial team.In this first episode, core-editor Kearrin Sims sat down with co-editors Susan Engel, Paul Hodge and Naohiro Nakamura, to discuss their motivations behind the book, what makes this volume so special, and how it deals with 'gl…

In the latest episode of the GDI podcast Professor Shuaib Lwasa talks to Dr Seth Schindler. They discuss the recent COP in Glasgow, urban development, African cities and the Urban Action Lab. Shuaib Lwasa is a Professor of Urban Sustainability at Makerere University, Uganda. He has worked extensively on interdisciplinary research projects focused o…

Social unrest is on the rise once more. A surge in discontent in the wake of the global financial crisis was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic but is resuming in many places and in many different forms as the pandemic begins to recede. The causes, manifestations and consequences of this discontent is the subject of Perspectives on Global Develop…

In this podcast, Kristen Hopewell, Canada Research Chair in Global Policy, presents research from her new book analyzing the impact of the growing US-China conflict on the multilateral trading system. Hopewell argues that China’s ascent has significantly weakened American control over the governing institutions of the trading system and its power t…

In this new mini-series three GDI academics talk to The University of Manchester’s Dr Nic Gowland about how their research is helping to deliver the UN Sustainable Development Goals for global health, equality and sustainability.More than 80% of South Asia’s farmers are cultivating under two hectares, usually in scattered plots. Most lack access to…

In this new mini-series three GDI academics talk to The University of Manchester’s Dr Nic Gowland about how their research is helping to deliver the UN Sustainable Development Goals for global health, equality and sustainability.Research shows that nearly 70% of Indonesians aged 40 and over, with moderate to high cardiovascular risk, don’t receive …

In this new mini-series three GDI academics talk to The University of Manchester’s Dr Nic Gowland about how their research is helping to deliver the UN Sustainable Development Goals for global health, equality and sustainability.Prof Stephanie Barrientos has been researching the role of workers for over a decade. Her particular focus is on gender i…

In the latest Global Development Institute podcast, Professor David Hulme interviews Dr David Little, an environmental consultant who has worked internationally on oil spills for a major part of his life.They discuss his work and their recent journal article on oil spills and climate change.You can find a transcript of this podcast on our website: …

Nick Jepson talks to Ilias Alami and Adam Dixon about their recent talk at the Global Development Institute. The talk blurb is below:The talk contributes to the development of state capitalism as a reflexively critical project focusing on the morphology of present-day capitalism, and particularly on the changing role of the state. We bring analytic…

Inequality is the crisis of our time. The growing gap between a few at the top and the rest of society damages us all. No longer able to deny the crisis, every government in the world is now pledged to fix it – and yet it keeps on getting worse.This talk focuses on his new book, and Ben Phillips has shown why, in looking for answers, we need to mov…

How did Western imperialism shape the developing world? In Imperialism and the Developing World, Atul Kohli tackles this question by analyzing British and American influence on Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America from the age of the British East India Company to the most recent U.S. war in Iraq. He argues that both Britain and the U.S.…

Using case studies from research conducted in Nepal, Bangladesh and Uganda, this webinar will reveal how powerful women are critical actors in securing policy change and consolidating policy gains. The webinar explores the different strategies women’s movement actors and women inside the state use behind the scenes to bypass the political gatekeepe…

Catch up with our webinar which introduced the African Cities Research Consortium (ACRC) and outlined how the ACRC and its international partners is planning to tackle complex, political and systemic problems in some of Africa’s fastest-growing urban areas.ACRC has been awarded a contract of £32 million from the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Devel…

India and China have responded very differently to the lives and livelihoods threats created by Covid-19 and they have experienced very different outcomes. This webinar explores the different ways in which political factors have shaped policy responses to Covid-19 in China and India and the relationships between scientific/technical analysis of the…

What kind of politics help to secure inclusive development? After 9 years of research across 26 countries, summing up ESID findings hasn’t been simple. But Three Cs kept cropping up: Context, Capacity, Coalitions.Listen to the a lecture on the Three C’s with ESID’s Research Director Professor Sam Hickey Find out more about the Global Development In…

In this special podcast we sat down for a chat with Chrissie Wellington OBE, who was the 2020 recipient of The University of Manchester Outstanding Alumni Award.The four-time World Ironman Champion and current Global Head of Health and Wellbeing at Parkrun, talked about her time at Manchester, what attracted her to International Development, her re…

Mark Anner will share findings from his survey data on the impact of March 2020 order cancellations by major apparel brands and retailers with global supplier factories (USD 40 billion), which left millions of low-income workers (mostly young women) without income. A subsequent campaign to pressure these corporations to ‘#payup” was largely success…

Wind power has expanded quickly in Brazil, while solar power lags there and both wind and solar power have struggled to take off in South Africa. Professor Kathryn Hochstetler argues that four different political economies - climate change, industrial policy, consumption and distribution, and siting - help account for energy transition. However, co…

Dr Amani Abou-Zeid of the African Union discusses Africa: 75 years after the Manchester Pan-African Congress. Her talk was part of a symposium to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the 5th Pan-African Congress which was held in Manchester.Dr Amani Abou-Zeid is currently the African Union Commissioner for Infrastructure, Energy, ICT and Tourism. She …

The Covid-19 pandemic created a major shock to the global economy. The ramifications of this shock are reverberating through global value chains to reach workers and sites of production throughout the world.These ramifications are both short and long term. In the short term, the crisis was a major shock for developing economies particularly those w…

Charity Mumbi and Jack Makau work for Muungano wa Wanavijiji, a social movement of 'slum' residents and urban poor people in Kenya, affiliated to SDI International. In this podcast they describe the last few months of working through the initial outbreak of Covid-19, outlining how communities and their organisations have been responding. Their agil…

In this special podcast, we are lucky to be joined by the editors of the newly published Routledge Handbook of Migration and Development, Tanja Bastia and Ronald Skeldon.In this episode they talk about their long-term collaboration in the fields of migration and development and their wish to build on long-standing research by bringing together esta…

In the latest episode of our ‘In Conversation’ podcast we caught up with Shamima and Alicya; two Manchester Alumni whose fashion business was recently highly commended for social innovation at the Manchester Making A Difference Awards 2020.Listen here to find out how they came up with the idea, what empowerment and sustainability means to them, the…