The history of universities and higher education in Somalia is marked by the civil war that began in 1991 and which lasted for more than 10 years and which brought the higher education to a halt. How is the university landscape recovering and developing? What… Read More
The evidence ecosystem in South Africa is rapidly evolving.
I am getting more feedback about the discussion paper published by Southern Voice that I have co-produced with Maria Malho, Vanesa Weyrauch and Fred Carden with support from HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation, State Capability, Policymaking and the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Do Knowledge Systems Matter?. The aim of… Read More
Here my takeaways from two great days at the University of Oulu where I attended the Burning Questions 2019 event to discuss and challenge the status quo of education systems and education in international development.
During a seminar organised by the EduKnow research group at the University of Tampere on comparative education, I came across the interesting concept of reference society. In a nutshell, countries which, like Finland, find themselves at the top of the PISA ranking may become models or references… Read More
I was recently in Florence to meet the team at the UNICEF’s Office of Research-Innocenti and present & discuss some of the experiences of the Knowledge Sector Initiative in Indonesia. I was part of the implementing team during phase 1 from 2013-2017 leading the research and… Read More
The Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Belgrade has a long history. It was established in 1838 and today it is located in a modern building in downtown Belgrade. I went there to meet Dragan Stanojević, Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology. I wanted… Read More
The search for ways to design policies that help to solve societal problems is continuously evolving. The traditional evidence-based approach to policy making involves generating research results and using these to inform policy decisions. This blog post is based on an interview with Mikko Annala, Head… Read More
Last week I attended the Development Days Conference 2018 in Helsinki. This is a yearly event organised by the Finnish Society for Development Research. This year’s topic was: The Politics of Sustainability: Re-thinking resources, values and justice. It is a nice and informal event which… Read More
There is an interesting exchange mid-way through David Letterman’s interview to President Barack Obama on Netflix. Letterman asks President Obama about his reflection on policymaking and the role and power that the president actually has. Obama answer is quite illuminating in terms of the nature of… Read More
