Research & Publications

I have a particular interest in exploring how ICTs and online/mobile tech can help  to create spaces for participation and empowerment; help people engage with the institutions which control their lives or help people take more power over their communities, and enjoy writing (and occasionally being published) in this space.

Professional publications

  • The Business Model Sustainability Toolkit
    (for the UN Foundation’s Digital Impact Alliance, 2022)
    Led DIAL team and external expert consultants to develop DIAL’s first interactive guidance product for the digital development implementers; part of Digital Principles capacity development for development actors.
  • Voices of the Silicon Savannah: Key challenges facing Kenya’s social-tech ecosystem – views from within
    (self-directed research in Kenya in 2018)
    The social-tech ecosystem in Kenya – a thriving social-tech sectors.  But some think it is not having the impact it could; is not as financially successful or sustainable as people had hoped; and may be stagnating and in need of nurture. I asked those involved why this is so and what can be done to improve matters.
  • Development is Going Digital: What is the role of international NGOs?
    (for Oxfam GB, with George Flatters, 2017)
    Primary research into the current and future opportunities relating to ICTs for Development in the Horn, East & Central Africa, exploring opportunities and appropriate roles for large international NGOs.
  • Impact of online voting on participatory budgeting in Brazil
    (Chapter 4 in World Bank book ‘Civic tech in the global south: assessing technology for the global good’, Peixoto & Mifry, 2017)
    Primary field research and evaluation report on the role and impact of ICTs in the largest participatory budgeting exercise in the world in the state of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil.
  • Evaluating Digital Citizen Engagement: A Practical Guide
    (for the World Bank, with Evangelia Berdou, Martin Belcher, Savita Bailur, Claudia Lopes and Jonathan Dudding, 2016)
    I led a multi-disciplinary team of post-doc academics and practitioners (from Aptivate, IDS, ICA:UK, LSE and the University of Cambridge) to produce a practitioners guide to the evaluation of the role of technology in citizen participation work.
  • A framework for assessing participatory ICT4D
    (for the University of Manchester, with Richard Duncombe, 2013)
    A working paper developing ideas from my Masters dissertation on how to deliver and evaluate participatory approaches to ICTs for Development.

External blogs and self-published articles