As of March 2026, this website is no longer being updated. I now work mainly on climate issues, especially in Brighton and Hove, and new work can be found on the website of Climate:Change, our independent think-tank on socially inclusive action in the City: www.climatechangebh.org.uk.
Meanwhile, however, this website has over 850 entries, mostly representing my work on international development from 2010-2025. Among much else, there are over 50 book reviews, more than 20 papers and training cases on bridging research and policy and on managing think-tanks, nearly 100 articles on climate change, and many papers on other topics, including aid, food security and nutrition, and the future of international development. See ‘Topics and Themes’ for more details. I can be reached at sm@simonmaxwell.net.
Development Research in Europe: towards an (all) star alliance
Development Research in Europe: towards an (all) star alliance, EADI Newsletter, 3-2002 (also in The European Journal of Development Research, 15:1, June 2003)
Anyone taking a hard look at research on development in Europe would surely conclude that this is an 'industry' in urgent need of rationalisation. The products are world class in many areas, to be sure. But the industry is also characterised (a) by a preponderance of small units, with high fixed costs, (b) by a good deal of redundancy, in the sense that the same topics are found on many research agendas, and, (c) in some areas by a worrying lack of market penetration (the European Commission?). It is also an industry in which some units remain very much in the public sector, whereas others operate under market conditions, with small or no core grants. There are also new entrants - for example, the research and policy departments of NGOs - challenging the established players. EADI already has over 150 institutional members, of very diverse character - and its list of members by no means exhausts the potential membership of research producers in Europe. The structure of the industry - of our industry - exhibits a good deal of path dependency. Many units have grown out of university teaching departments. Others are intimately linked to government development cooperation ministries. In these cases, research units meet a local need which is unlikely to disappear................. (see link in title for full article)