The ODID Blog

Opinion and analysis from across the ODID community

The views expressed in posts do not necessarily reflect the views of the department itself or of the University of Oxford. They should be understood as the personal opinions of the author.

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Matai Muon
24 May, 2023

Let refugees be economic contributors: a personal perspective

MPhil in Development Studies student Matai Muon reflects on the barriers he encountered as a refugee in Kenya seeking education and employment, and argues new changes to the law there must be fully applied to enable others to fulfil their potential.

This story was originally published by The New Humanitarian.

Matai Muon By
Matai Muon
24 May, 2023

Let refugees be economic contributors: a personal perspective

MPhil in Development Studies student Matai Muon reflects on the barriers he encountered as a refugee in Kenya seeking education and employment, and argues new changes to the law there must be fully applied...

By
Naohiko Omata
10 May, 2023

Humanitarian aid as performance?

When refugees use humanitarian assistance in rational but unexpected ways, aid agencies often fail to understand this “off script” response. Identifying the roles actors in the aid system are expected to...

By
Carlos Vargas-Silva
28 Apr, 2023

Netflix’s Transatlantic is great consumer surplus for those interested in migration

Carlos Vargas-Silva gets more than he expected - including a very late night - out of a glitzy new streaming series about the predecessor to the International Rescue Committee

By
Santiago Izquierdo-Tort
Esteve Corbera
12 Apr, 2023

The environmentalism of the paid? Exploring local encounters with payments to conserve forests 

As conservation agendas across the Global South increasingly rely on environmental markets, we explore how policies that pay landowners for forest protection play out in local contexts, and detect the...

By
Christopher Adam
29 Mar, 2023

Investing in human capital for post-COVID economic recovery

New modelling explores the medium-term macroeconomic impact of the COVID pandemic in low-income countries and shows the need for significant and sustained concessional external financing to reverse loss-of-...

By
Marie Godin
Ghislain Bahati
22 Mar, 2023

Forging new lives: Congolese refugees as digital creators

From supporting widows to promoting comedy acts, innovative YouTube channels launched by refugees in Nairobi are helping them gain both an income and a sense of belonging

Children raising their hands in a school room in Ethiopia By
Kath Ford
Sophie von Russdorf
Alula Pankhurst
Richard Freund
08 Mar, 2023

Food for thought? How Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Programme benefits children's foundational cognitive skills

New research from Young Lives on foundational cognitive skills provides ground-breaking evidence that children from households benefitting from Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) have better...

By
Nikita Sud
Diego Sánchez-Ancochea
23 Feb, 2023

Southern discomfort: is there value in the concept of the Global South?

As development thinkers challenge the construct of “the South”, our research explores its layered origins and argues that it can play a constructive role in understanding and addressing global power...

By
Jörg Friedrichs
Niklas Stoehr
Giuliano Formisano
16 Feb, 2023

What Brexit and the election of Trump can teach us about the politics of emotion

Analysis of social media posts during two recent periods of intense contestation sheds light on how political actors make use of emotion to mobilise support

By
Ramin Nassehi
02 Feb, 2023

Putting climate change and inequality first in teaching economics

In the latest post in our mini-series highlighting how our alumni are researching and tackling climate change, Dr Ramin Nassehi argues the need to turn economics teaching on its head and start with real-...

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