As of March 2026, this website is no longer being updated.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.
Saucy with the Gods: Nutrition and Food Security Speak to Poverty
'Saucy with the Gods: Nutrition and Food Security Speak to Poverty' in Food Policy, Vol. 23, No. 3/4, pp.215-230, 1998
Poverty reduction has become the dominant paradigm of the 1990s, but poverty planners have had to re-learn many hard-won lessons from the earlier experience of nutrition and food security. Poverty planners can also learn from the current struggles of these related disciplines: for example, on how to discriminate between competing narratives, on the problems consequent on nutrition transitions, on managing international targets, and on questions of accountability. In general, this example of poor communication between disciplines emphasises the need for institutional learning and for management of knowledge. Development organisations need networks that cut across disciplines and sectors, which build cooperation in the field, and which develop new forms of partnership with poor people.