As of March 2026, this website is no longer being updated.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, 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.
EU aid: what's it for?
If you have ever found yourself questioning what EUEuropean Union development aid should be for, then you should have been at our recent event hosted by the EDCSP team and Open Europe in London on 13 September 2011.
Around 120 government officials, academics, consultants, journalists and NGOs representatives turned up to grill our panel of experts, which included Baroness Glenys Kinnock (opposition spokesperson for the Department for International Development (DFID) in the House of Lords), the EDCSP’s Simon Maxwell (Senior Research Associate at ODI), Chris Heaton-Harris MP (Member of Parliament for Daventry), Stephen Booth (Open Europe’s Research Director), and Liz Ford as chair (Deputy Editor of the Guardian’s Global Development website).
To catch up on the event, read a summary here, or watch it on video here.