In this episode of Between the Lines, IDS Fellow, John Gaventa interviews Fiona Anciano and Joanna Wheeler who edited the book: Political Values and Narratives of Resistance: Social Justice and the Fractured Promises of Post-colonial States. The book brings together multidisciplinary perspectives to explore how political values and acts of resistance impact the delivery of social justice in post-colonial states such as South Africa and Zimbabwe. Examining important themes in political...

In this episode of Between the Lines, IDS Director of Research, Peter Taylor interviews IDS Research Fellows; Danny Burns and Jo Howard, and Sonia M. Ospina, Professor of Public Management and Policy at the NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service who edited the recently published: SAGE Handbook of Participatory Research and Inquiry. The Handbook presents contemporary, cutting-edge approaches to participatory research and inquiry with contributions from 137 authors in 71 chapters. It has...

India's urban slums exhibit dramatic variation in their access to local public goods and services - paved roads, piped water, trash removal, sewers, and streetlights. Why are some vulnerable communities able to demand and secure development from the state while others fail? Drawing on more than two years of fieldwork in the north Indian cities of Bhopal and Jaipur, Demanding Development accounts for the uneven success of India's slum residents in securing local public goods and services....

The world of development thinkers and practitioners is abuzz with a new lexicon: the idea of “the nexus” between water, food, and energy. It promises better integration of multiple sectoral elements, a better transition to greener economies, and sustainable development. However, there appears to be little agreement on its precise meaning, whether it only complements existing environmental governance approaches or how it can be enhanced in national contexts. In this episode of Between the...

Increasingly, finance dominates the way we live our lives. Despite seeing, in recent years, growth in economies globally, more and more people are struggling to make ends meet. Inequality gaps continue to grow, and the bulk of income is concentrated among a small group. The term ‘Financialization’ has become the go-term for scholars grappling with the growth and changing face of finance and its consequences. Some explain it as the domination of financial markets and institutions over other...

As COVID-19 vaccine rollouts get underway across the world, many are resting their hopes on vaccines as a pathway out of the pandemic. However, an increasing number of people believe vaccines are unsafe or unnecessary. Vaccine hesitancy is nothing new, indeed it is as old as vaccination itself. So, what can we learn from previous vaccine programmes, about what people’s concerns are and how they can be addressed? In the latest episode of Between the Lines, IDS Director Melissa Leach joins...

We live in a world of technologies that misdirect our attention, poison our political conversations, and jeopardize our democracies. In his book: ‘Lie Machines: How to Save Democracy from Troll Armies, Deceitful Robots, Junk News Operations, and Political Operatives’, through analysis of social media and public polling data, in-depth interviews with political consultants, bot writers, and journalists, Philip Howard: Professor of Internet Studies at the Oxford Internet Institute, offers ways...

How do marginalised voters living in conditions of intense socioeconomic inequality, engage in electoral politics and improve their material conditions? Grounding her research in the context of Pakistan, IDS researcher, Shandana Khan Mohmand, probes into this question by using original data collected across different villages and households in rural Pakistan. In this episode of Between the Lines, Professor Adam Auerbach, from the American University in Washington DC, specialising in local...

How do we determine when our research has impact? If our aim is to produce research that contributes to making a positive difference in the world, how do we measure and track achievements? In this episode of Between the Lines, IDS’ Director of Communications and Impact, James Georgalakis, speaks with James Gow and Henry Redwood from Kings College London, who co-authored the book: Impact in International Affairs: The Quest for World-Leading Research. They explore the concept of impact and the...

Why is uncertainty so important to politics today? From finance and technology to climate change, pandemics, migration and security, what the future holds feels increasingly uncertain and demands alternative approaches. If hopes of much-needed progressive transformations are to be realised, then current blinkered understandings of uncertainty need to be met with renewed democratic struggle. In this episode of Between the Lines, co-authors Andy Stirling, Sobia Ahmad Kaker and Ian Scoones....

Dismantling Race in Higher Education: Racism, Whiteness and Decolonising the Academy, reveals the roots of structural racism that limit social mobility and equality within Britain for Black and ethnicised students and academics in its inherently white Higher Education institutions. It brings together both established and emerging scholars in the fields of Race and Education to explore what institutional racism in British Higher Education looks like in colour-blind ‘post-race’ times. It...

An increasing number of countries around the world have been trialling a ‘basic income’ for their citizens, and the Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for governments to reevalutate and strengthen social safety nets. The UN has called for a Temporary Basic Income, to provide a lifeline for the world’s poorest. Could something like a ‘Universal Basic Income’ help in Covid-19 recovery, and in the longer-term, help to address some of societies biggest challenges? In this episode of...

In this episode of Between the Lines, IDS Head of Knowledge, Impact and Policy, Kelly Shephard, talks to author and broadcaster, Helen Lewis about her book, Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights. In looking at the history of feminism and stories of rebel women, details are too often whitewashed or forgotten in our modern search for feel-good, inspirational heroines. In this book, Helen reclaims the history of feminism as a history of difficult women. See acast.com/privacy for...

Uprootedness, exile and forced displacement, be it due to conflict, natural disasters or even so-called 'development', affects the lives of millions of people across the globe. The numbers of people affected are increasing, as shocks and crises force people to flee their homes and find safe places to live. In this episode of Between the Lines IDS researcher, Jaideep Gupta speaks with Lyla Mehta from IDS and Katarzyna Grabska from PRIO and Erasmus University, Rotterdam, about their co-edited...

One of the most-discussed digital financial inclusion projects, M-Pesa facilitates the transfer of money and access to formal financial services via the mobile phone infrastructure and has grown at a phenomenal rate since its launch in 2007. In this episode of Between the Lines. Serena Natile discusses her book, The Exclusionary Politics of Digital Financial Inclusion, which critiques mobile money as part of a historical succession of finance solutions and puts forward a strategy for gender...

At a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has raised issues of welfare regimes higher up the global agenda, author Ferdinand Eibl discusses his book, Social Dictatorships: The Political Economy of the Welfare State in the Middle East and North Africa. Using mixed methods of study, the book presents an explanation as to why social spending in authoritarian regimes differ and presents case studies of the political origins of the Tunisian and Egyptian welfare state.   Interviewing Ferdinand is IDS...

The global pandemic Covid-19 is impacting people in many and varied ways. The effects on all our lives are immense and diverse, from rural and urban communities, young and old, from different geographic and economic groups. We are each living with different realities of a global crisis. IDS' Melissa Leach, Hayley MacGregor,Annie Wilkinson and Ian Scoones discuss how we can learn from past epidemics and outbreaks and the need to understand social dynamics in order to respond to...

Water is crucial to sustain life, food, ecosystems, human health and wellbeing. Still, millions of poor and marginalised women and men around the world face challenges in accessing water due to a range of ecological, socio-political, institutional and economic reasons.   The focus of this month’s episode of Between the Lines is a new book called ‘Water for Food Security, Nutrition and Social Justice’ . IDS researcher, Lidia Cabral interviews two of its authors IDS Fellow, Lyla Mehta and...

Domestic violence remains widespread in many countries. Approximately 1/3 of women globally experience some form of violence in their lifetime. In this month’s episode of Between the Lines, IDS researcher, Sohela Nazneen discusses a book that she has co edited entitled, ‘Negotiating Gender Equity in the Global South: The Politics of Domestic Violence Policy.' The book investigates the conditions under which countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia have adopted legislation against...

In recent years, climate change and the environment has shot up the agenda in political and public discourse, and a new type of politics has taken shape, with many people calling for urgent, radical change. In this month’s Between the Lines, IDS Director Melissa Leach, Professor Ian Scoones and Professor Peter Newell discuss their co-edited book, The Politics of Green Transformations. Drawing on international examples, they reflect on past transformations as examples of positive change and...

In this month’s episode of Between the Lines we discuss a new book that helps us to better understand how power works. Power, Empowerment and Social Change uncovers how power operates around the world, and how it can be transformed through collective action and social leadership. Discussing this collaborative work with IDS Research Officer, Katy Oswald are co-editors Rosemary McGee and Jethro Pettit.

Despite important strides in the fight against poverty in the last few decades, child poverty remains widespread and persistent, particularly in Africa. Two-thirds of children in sub-Saharan Africa face all manners of hardship. These include poor living conditions, low educational outcomes, high levels of malnutrition and often high risks of exposure to different forms of violence. One in five children in sub-Saharan Africa are estimated to grow up in extreme “monetary” poverty, meaning they...

This month we look at Refugee Tales, a series of books that bring together poets and novelists to tell the stories of individuals who have directly experienced Britain’s policy of indefinite immigration detention.  IDS' Kelly Shephard speaks with Emma Parsons who wrote “The Teacher’s Tale”, which is told from her perspective as an English teacher, giving support to a refugee detained under the UK immigration system.Links:Refugee Tales website: http://refugeetales.org/   Comma Press, the...

We're celebrating one year of --between the lines-- with a special episode that brings together clips from all the episodes across the series.  This special episode showcases the range of speakers and wealth of ideas from the series, drawing out some of the key elements needed for progressive change. 

This month Hayley Macgregor speaks with Maya Unnithan, Professor of Social and medical anthropology at the University of Sussex, about her new book, ‘Fertility, Health and Reproductive Politics: Re-imagining Rights in India'. Drawing on ethnographic research over the past eighteen years, Maya  brings together the practices, experiences and discourse on fertility and reproduction in Northern India, into an overarching analytical framework on power and gender politics. Through its focus on...