Agents of change? 

Understanding empowerment in international development

The LSE's Sylvia Chant Lecture for 2025 will be delivered by Jo Sharp, Geographer Royal for Scotland.

Over the 25 years that Professor Sharp has been working on international development projects, the concept of empowerment has become mainstreamed. As participatory approaches have become more commonplace, the focus has moved to people as the source of change.  But how – and why – this change happens is not always so clear. 

This talk draws on two research collaborations: one with Bedouin women and local academics in Egypt’s south-eastern desert, and another with an interdisciplinary and international One Health project in northern Tanzania. Reflecting on these experiences, Professor Sharp will explore the assumptions we make about people’s abilities and desires to act as agents of change.

The discussion will be lead by Claire Mercer, a human geographer working at the intersection of human geography and African studies. Her early work developed a critique of the NGO-ization of development, and subsequent work developed postcolonial approaches to civil society and diaspora. She is currently working on new research on peripheral urbanization in African cities. She has conducted research in Tanzania, Cameroon and the UK.

This event is being hosted by LSE's Department of Gender Studies and its Department of Geography and Environment. The Sylvia Chant Lecture Series is organised in memory of Sylvia Chant, Professor of Development Geography.

Speakers

• Jo Sharp
  Geographer Royal for Scotland.
• Claire Mercer
  Human geographer

Notes

You can attend in person at LSE, or follow online, once you register here. There will also be video of the lecture made available shortly afterwards on LSE's YouTube channel here.