How do we plan, campaign and work in development when we don’t know what is going to happen and we don’t know what solutions will work? Aid professionals know that real life has a way of ignoring our plans and procedures, but often we block out that knowledge in order to keep functioning. In this talk, Duncan Green asks what would we do differently, if we acknowledge and try to adapt to the messiness of reality.

Dr Duncan Green is Senior Strategic Adviser at Oxfam GB, Honorary Professor of International Development at Cardiff University and a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Development Studies. He was previously a Visiting Fellow at Notre Dame University, a Senior Policy Adviser on Trade and Development at the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID), a Policy Analyst on trade and globalisation at the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) and Head of Research and Engagement at the Just Pensions project on socially responsible investment.

He is author of From Poverty to Power: How Active Citizens and Effective States can Change the World (Oxfam International, June 2008) and has written several books on Latin America including Silent Revolution: The Rise and Crisis of Market Economics in Latin America (2003), Faces of Latin America (2006) and Hidden Lives: Voices of Children in Latin America and the Caribbean (1998).

Presentation slides are available from the Devpolicy events page: https://crawford.anu.edu.au/devpolicy/events

Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University's Development Policy Centre. 

Read and subscribe to our daily blogs at devpolicy.org.

Learn more about our research and join our public events at devpolicy.anu.edu.au.

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram for latest updates on our blogs, research and events.

You can send us feedback, and ideas for episodes too, to [email protected].