Evidence and Practice in an Age of Inequality

Conference 2015 featured image — Participants at the 5th ACFID University Network Conference, Monash University, Melbourne

THEME

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As the UNDP noted at the end of 2013, ‘The world is more unequal today than at any point since World War II’. Inequality is also discussed as so severe, that the 85 richest people in the world own the same as half of the world’s populations – 3.5 billion people. Inequality is not confined to income or material inequality, but extends to intersecting forms of discrimination and interrelated issues of access to vital resources including health, education, and justice.

Such issues are forcing actors from NGOs, academia, multilaterals and donors to rethink their role and purpose, while continuing to grapple with absolute poverty. As the development community responds to the evolving face of poverty and inequality, questions around the increasing importance of evidence in this response have never been more important.

The 5th ACFID University Network Conference provides a unique opportunity to bring together researchers and practitioners to surface emerging evidence around inequality and discuss what this means for development policy and practice. The Conference provides space to discuss the following two primary questions:

What do we know about inequality, and how do we know it?
Evidence based policy and practice: what is it and how does it work?

PROGRAM

Find the program and published selection of papers from Evidence and Practice in an Age of Inequality.

PLENARY SPEAKERS

Find more about thespeakers at the 2015 Conference, including Martin Ravallion, Yen Vo, Zakia Baig and more...

Martin Ravallion: Martin holds the inaugural Edmond D. Villani Chair of Economics at Georgetown University, prior to which he was the Director of the World Bank’s research department. He has advised numerous governments and international agencies on poverty and policies for fighting it, and he has written extensively on this and other subjects in economics, including four books and 200 papers in scholarly journals and edited volumes.

Yen Vo: is the Founder of the Disability Research and Development Center (DRD) in Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam and a lecturer at the Ho Chi Minh City Open University in the Department of Social Work. Yen is also the founder and chair of the Vietnam network of 35 disabled people organizations since 2011 and a committee member of the Vietnam Federation on Disability.

Zakia Baig: Zakia is a human rights activist from Pakistan and the Founding Director of the Australian Hazara Women’s Friendship Network. Zakia is passionate about combating gender inequality and promoting women’s empowerment through education and skills development.

Paul Nichols: Chief Executive of WaterAid Australia. He is one of Australia’s leading international community development practitioners, having worked with non-government, private sector and government organisations for over 25 years. He has most recently been a senior executive in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade responsible for the aid program to South Asia.

Ricardo Fuentes-Nieva: Ricardo is the head of research for Oxfam GB. He manages a team delivering high profile research in support of Oxfam’s global campaigns. He has driven the intellectual work behind Oxfam’s campaign against extreme inequality. This includes co-authoring Working for the Few and doing the statistical analysis behind the fact that 85 richest people control as much wealth as the bottom half of the world’s population.

Helen Szoke: Helen is a human rights advocate and Chief Executive of Oxfam Australia since January 2013. Prior to this appointment, she served as Australia’s Federal Race Discrimination Commissioner, following seven years as the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commissioner.

Ei Shwe Yi Win: Program Director of the Socially Marginalized People program at CARE International in Myanmar. She has worked for CARE for almost 8 years and is responsible for developing and refining the Socially Marginalized People program strategy. She is also responsible for ensuring that all interventions under this program are of a high technical quality and lead to significant and lasting changes for socially marginalized people.

Fenton Lutunatabua: Fenton is currently Pacific Communications Coordinator and Field Organiser with 350.org. He is also a trained facilitator. He graduated from the University of the South Pacific in 2012 with his Bachelor of Arts (double major in Journalism and Applied Psychology). He has extensive experience in the media industry –- in Broadcasting, Print Media, Television and new media. Fenton has a good understanding of the media landscape, is an excellent communicator, has informed empathy and bravely and ambitiously searches for opportunities to develop his journalistic capacity.

STUDENT FORUM: DISRUPTING DEVELOPMENT

As a part of the ACFID University Network Conference, a forum entitled "Disrupting Development" was co-presented with the support of WhyDev on an adjacent day.

As a part of the ACFID University Network Conference, a forum targeted at students was co-presented with the support of WhyDev on an adjacent day. The Student Forum was entitled “Disrupting Development”.

Students sometimes remain marginal in academic and professional forums. And yet, they are the next generation of development workers, policy makers, researchers and activists. They are the emerging talent and hold critical and creative ideas with the potential to transform international development and challenge ideas about inequality and poverty.

The aim of the forum was to create a participatory space for students to:

Contribute to discussions about the key themes of the conference – inequality and poverty;
Discuss what the themes mean; and
Identify what students actions can be taken forward.

Delegates from the forum will report reported back to the ACFID University Network Conference on their deliberation and ideas during the plenary, in order to feed in the ideas of the future cohort of activists and change-makers.

The program from “Disrupting Development” can be downloaded here.