Greetings to everyone who is reading this on the week of Monday 4th November – and a suggestion.
If you’re in or near Dublin this week, and interested in development issues, we can recommend an event that’s now under way. The Trinity International Development Initiative (TIDI) is hosting its annual Development Research Week to raise the profile of Irish and international development research. TIDI will be hosting sessions in collaboration with researchers and students from TCD and other education institutes, as well as NGOs, to highlight development research and its application across a range of topics. The five-day-long event is taking place both within Trinity College, at the Long Room Hub and the Arts Building, and nearby, in the Centre for Global Health and the Biomedical Services Institute. TIDI “exists to maximise Trinity College Dublin’s contribution to understanding and addressing the major global development challenges of our time through research, teaching and outreach activities”, and judging from the programme of events, TIDI is doing its best to address as many challenges as possible this week. It’s a pretty impressive and varied selection of papers and presentations, to say the least. Among the session topics are moral issues, such as whether development is possible without rights and the implications of tax havens; health concerns, such as maternal and child nutrition and helminth infection; and research-related subjects such as culture and gender-sensitive research and challenges in qualitative research. Technology implementation, project management, governance and much more will also be discussed. The speakers are impressive too; they hail from major departments within TCD itself, of course, but there are also speakers and participants from UCD, Queen’s Belfast, the University of Edinburgh, Johns Hopkins University, Christian Aid, Concern, Irish Aid and DSA Ireland, among others. Even if you can’t attend TIDI Research Week the programme — at http://www.tcd.ie/tidi/outreach/development-research-week/ – is worth a look. And if you can, well, please get in touch with www.tcd.ie/tidi
