I am a Professor of Civil Society and Social Impact with a successful track record of producing research that delivers beneficial outcomes for NGOs seeking to enhance their accountability.

My research interests include NGO accountability and regulation, the role of language and translation in NGO development work, NGO-community relationships and pracademia (=research activity that bridges the academic-practitioner divide). I have published widely in a variety of formats on these issues, including monographs, journal articles and commissioned policy papers.

I am committed to research that results in significant benefits for the people and organisations that I work with. In a recent report by the UK Collaborative on Development Research (UKCDR), my work was used as a case study of the UK's global research impact.

I am the Principal Investigator of an AHRC-funded project that aims to solve communication problems between development NGOs and local communities (Translation Glossary Project). Using principles of community-based participatory research, this project worked with local people in Malawi to design a new method of participatory translation, which resulted in a co-produced translation glossary of development terminology in Chichewa-English. It is the first comprehensive glossary of development terminology co-produced through participatory methods. It contains 385 terms translated into the vernacular, including 70 terms that are not included in the Oxford-Chichewa Dictionary (e.g. austerity, conscientisation, social exclusion). We also produced a training handbook on our methods so that other practitioners and researchers can generate their own glossaries in different countries and languages. In this way, we aim to create long-term impact by building the language capacity of development stakeholders within and beyond Malawi. 

The glossary initiative addresses a need for more language support in the NGO sector that I identified in a major AHRC-funded research project that I recently conducted with the University of Reading and the civil society organisation, INTRAC. The project, titled The Listening Zones of NGOs: languages and cultural knowledge in development programmes, explored the role that languages and cultural knowledge play in the policies and practices of development NGOs, and drew upon fieldwork that I conducted in Malawi. The project provided innovative policy recommendations that were adopted by several NGOs in the UK, Malawi and Peru. The project’s findings are contained in my recent book, co-authored with Professor Hilary Footitt and Dr Wine Tesseur: 'Development NGOs and Languages: Listening, Power and Inclusion'.

I am a member of the Steering Group of the Pracademic Development Initiative, which aims to support the career development of researchers who work between the worlds of academic and practice in the pursuit of meaningful social change. Our recent Special Issue of Development in Practice highlighted the innovative work of pracademics across multiple geographical contexts, reflecting on the challenges that they face and the institutional arrangements that enable or constrain their research.

I am also a member of the Independent Review Panel for Accountable Now, the global membership network that works with civil society organisations on improving their accountability practices. I have been consulted by various NGOs for my expert advice, including Tearfund, World Vision and Transparency International. In addition, I have served for several years as a Trustee of Amnesty International UK, and as a member of their International Issues Sub-Committee.

I am an experienced PhD supervisor, and have steered several students to successful completion of their doctoral research. I welcome proposals from PhD candidates on civil society topics, particularly those that investigate different aspects of NGO accountability.

I gained my PhD (International Relations) at the University of Southampton in 2004. My thesis examined the emergence of transnational public spheres among online networks of civil society activists. I worked at the University of Southampton and Liverpool John Moores University before joining the University of Portsmouth in 2008.

NGOs and Social Movements (Undergraduate and postgraduate, campus-taught and distance learning)

Researching International Relations (Postgraduate, campus-taught and distance learning)