The Coordinating Team

David Archer is Head of Programme Development at ActionAid, supporting human rights based approaches to development in Africa, Asia and Latin America. In the 1980s he researched popular education programmes inspired by Paulo Freire in Latin America (“Literacy and Power: The Latin American Battleground”, Earthscan 1990). In the 1990s he developed the Reflect approach to adult education and social change through an action research programme in Uganda, Bangladesh and El Salvador. Since 2000 he has facilitated the emergence of rights based education campaigns, co-founding the Global Campaign for  Education (www.campaignforeducation.org) and managing the Right to Education project (www.right-to-education.org). He has been involved in various collaborative research partnerships, particularly with the Institute of Education.

Kate Carroll is currently Research Coordinator at ActionAid. She has worked for ActionAid in many guises; including on HIV&AIDS, education and training. In her current role she aims to ensure ActionAid recognises its niche and added value in research, and – through adopting a research signature – is able to better prioritise and focus its research work so that local voices and knowledge contribute meaningfully to local, national, regional and international change.

 Flora Cornish is Associate Professor in Qualitative Research Methodology, in the Department of Methodology, London School of Economics. Following 10 years of research on community mobilisation at grassroots level in HIV prevention in India, her recent interests have focused on the role of international organisations and knowledge in supporting or undermining community mobilisation for health and development. Current work, with the International HIV/AIDS Alliance, critically considers the challenges of using internationally-recognised evidence and evaluation frameworks in the context of diverse local communities. She also works on the contribution of qualitative research methods to health and development, and is writing a book on the topic, with Morten Skovdal, for Practical Action Publishing.

Jude Fransman is the Principle Investigator for this seminar series. She is a sociologist based at the Open University and currently holds a Leverhulme Fellowship to explore NGO practitioner’s engagement with research.  Her background is in education (particularly non formal adult education and literacy) and her recent work has focused on research literacies, academic identity, research impact and evidence use, community-based research and the use of digital resources in research. She has worked for a variety of international organisations and continues to act as a special advisor on literacy for UNESCO.

David Lewis is professor of social policy and development at the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK. He has a longstanding interest in the interface between research, development policy and practice. He has worked with Oxfam, Save the Children, DFID, Sida and many other development agencies. He is author of several books including Development Brokers and Translators: The Ethnography of Aid and Agencies (2006, edited with D. Mosse), Bangladesh: Politics, Economy and Civil Society (2011), Non-Governmental Organizations, Management and Development (2014), and Anthropology and Development: Challenges for the Twenty-First Century (with K. Gardner, 2015).

Kate Newman is Head of Strategy Implementation and Internal Communication at Christian Aid. Kate leads Christian Aid’s work on organisational performance, learning and impact. Prior to joining Christian Aid Kate completed her PhD which explored the challenges and dilemmas in integrating participatory approaches and rights based approaches to development, focused on the education work of ActionAid International.  Throughout her PhD she grappled with the challenges of supporting a participatory action research process, valuing and buidling from different voices and acting as a researcher and practitioner, while delivering a piece of original research which satisfied the requirements of a PhD format.   She is particularly interested in the impact the evidence agenda is having on International NGOs, the space that exists for bringing in different conceptions of what good evidence looks like, and alternative knowledges and perspectives.

Jethro Pettit is a Research Fellow and Director of Teaching and Learning at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK. His interests are in processes of citizen participation in local governance, human rights and social justice, and the roles of civil society, social movements and civic leadership in achieving transformative and sustainable development. He works with organisations, professionals and leaders to develop context-appropriate methods of power analysis and to strengthen capacities for critical, reflective and experiential learning via workshops, evaluations and learning projects. Jethro has led or assisted evaluations and learning projects for European government aid agencies, NGOs and foundations, and has worked as a practitioner with development organisations and social movements in Latin America, Africa, Asia, the US and UK.

Jill Russell is Associate Director of Programme Impact for the International HIV/AIDS Alliance. Jill has been working in the field of international health and development for nearly two decades and at the International HIV/AIDS Alliance since 2004.  In her current role, Jill manages a team of highly qualified HIV technical advisors, researchers and data specialists and serves on the organisation’s senior management team. Before joining the Alliance, Jill worked at FHI360 as well as in various associate and managerial roles at the George Washington University. Jill holds a Masters in Health Services Administration from the George Washington University, a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics and Human Biology. She is currently completing a MSc in International Executive Management from Lancaster University in the United Kingdom.

Elaine Unterhalter:

Helen Yanacopulos: is a Senior Lecturer in International Politics and Development in the Development Policy and Practice group at the Open University in the UK. She has taught on modules around the issues of International Development, International Politics, Human Rights and Law and Conflict. Her research focuses on NGOs and civil society, transnational advocacy networks and social movements involved in: political uses of communication technologies; political mobilization and political action; global justice; protest; transnational governance; and the mediation and representation of International Development. She is the editor for the Zed Books series ‘Development Matters’ and her latest book International NGO Engagement, Advocacy, Activism! The Faces and Spaces of Change will be published in 2015.