Tag Archives: development

No Dancing, No Dancing: inside the global humanitarian crisis

Danis Dragovic’s ‘No Dancing, No Dancing: inside the global humanitarian crisis’ (Odyssey, 2018) is an important reflection on the aid and disaster industries, revisiting sites of previous aid work – South Sudan, Iraq and Timor-Leste – to discover what, if anything, has remained of earlier aid efforts and, where there has been failure, to seek […]

Some things change, some don’t in Timor-Leste

Alberto da Silva stood on a rise, in a red tightly zipped jacket against the ‘cool’ of the  morning,  surveying the voters for Timor-Leste’s presidential election lined up in the village of Leohitu just below. Leohitu sits at the end of about six kilometres of varyiable dirt road at the end of an often shaded […]

Timor-Leste: Glass half full

In 2010, a senior Timorese political figure remarked in private conversation that Timor-Leste had never been better. This particular political figure was commenting on the general state of Timor-Leste since his return in 1999, after a forced 25 year absence from the country. What is remarkable is not the political figure’s comment at that time, […]

Against bringing civilians into war zones

Presentation to the Asia-Pacific Civil-Military Centre for Excellence, 8 November 2011. In putting a case against the involvement of civilians in military operations at an event hosted by the Asia-Pacific Civil-Military Centre of Excellence is bit like placing Christians before lions and then having a debate as to whether the lions are hungry, and I […]

What is development?

The postgraduate International and Community Development course has existed for over 20 years at Deakin University. It is Australia’s largest and oldest course of its kind with hundreds of students studying in countries around the world. Our past and present students work in international aid agencies, local councils, state and federal governments, community-based organisations, and […]