For this wrap-up episode we've switched sides of the microphone to interview our host for the last 39 episodes, Ian Quick. (With thanks to Sam Meikle for taking over interviewing duties.) He talks about his formative experiences in the development & conflict management sectors, and why oral history felt like a meaningful contribution at this point in time. We go on to reflect more generally on *why* these stories matter. What do they tell us about who “we” are in public service, and how does this differ from the picture we usually get?  And beyond this, what does this all have to do w ..read more

"The only ethical way of doing this research is to stay involved in a profound manner, & to maintain these friendships and relationships." Judith Verweijen is a researcher who has spent a decade-plus interviewing soldiers and militias in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. We talk through what her process looks like, what men under arms actually do all day, and the complex social ecosystem that arises in protracted conflicts. We also talk a lot about the ethics of this work. Not just because many of these groups are implicated in serious human rights violations, but also because ther ..read more

Salma Ben Aissa Braham is a Tunisian humanitarian professional, and currently Country Director for the IRC in the Central African Republic. She spent half of her career (so far!) in her home country, and was entering her prime working years around the time of the 2011 revolution. We talk about that, naturally. We go on to discuss how she's approached her work in large-scale, seemingly intractable crises in C.A.R. and Yemen. Another major theme is the complicated relationship between the global South and the global North within the humanitarian profession. We talk at length about peoples' expec ..read more

Josep is a career humanitarian who's spent 20+ years with UNHCR working with refugees, and on forced displacement. But alongside there's something a bit unusual. That twigged for me personally when we met a few years back in Central Asia -- and he started speaking in Tajik to a local community, despite never having worked in the region. It turned out that alongside a half-dozen European languages he's also invested in Persian and Arabic, and that's kind of the key to this one. What does it take to listen respectfully, and understand, in contexts where you're necessarily an outsider? What does ..read more

Kathryn Nwajiaku-Dahou is Director of the Politics and Governance Programme at the Overseas Development Institute. Past work has included academic posts, several development NGOs, and the OECD's Development Assistance Committee. With this in mind, it's interesting that the recurring theme of this conversation is a rather ambivalent relationship with the aid sector.  She's worked with some of the marquee names in the sector, but specifically in roles that are critical or reformist in nature. Equally in talking about her work she is conscious of  the seriousness and the stakes of the o ..read more

Polly Mackenzie is CEO at Demos, a cross-party think tank in the United Kingdom. She's also worked at the centre of government within the 2010-15 coalition, and run a charity focusing on money and mental health. In the current fractious political environment Demos looks at big challenges like wealth inequality, "building back" after covid-19, and social protection for the most marginalised. We talk a lot about how to "do" public policy in a complex democracy -- in particular how to bring more human experience, more everyday behaviour, into the process. But we also go deep on what that means fo ..read more

Dao X. Tran is Managing Editor of Voice of Witness, which develops oral histories and education programs to amplify the voices of people impacted by injustice. Recent projects have included the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, indigenous Americans, and settlement of refugees in Appalachia. (You can find all their projects at voiceofwitness.org .) We start with her early years in Philadelphia, as a child refugee in a working class neighbourhood split by serious divides, and a path into social justice activism. We then get into the ethics and practice of oral history with marginalised communities ..read more

Kumekucha is a program to help people process conflict and trauma, and to craft new narratives for themselves. It’s running at the community level in coastal Kenya and Nairobi, for people affected by police brutality, by gang violence, and a whole range of adverse personal circumstances. (I strongly recommend checking out the Green String Network’s channel on Youtube for some of their short participant videos, which speak much more eloquently than I can.) In this episode we hear from two of the people involved. Onyango is an accomplished poet and story-teller, as you’ll hear very quickly, and ..read more

Kate Moger is Regional Vice-President for the Great Lakes region at the International Rescue Committee. She's based in Nairobi, although currently that’s in flux due to COVID-19. We start with her rather interesting route into the sector by way of a dubious Russian travel agency, some traumatic early experiences, and how and where this turned around into a fulfilling career. We then go deep on professionalisation and ethics in the humanitarian sector, and what this means for managing people in the present day. This includes her own experiences caring for a young child, and where the sector sti ..read more

(Bonus coronavirus lockdown episode) Ahmed Famau Ahmed is one of the facilitators that works with the “Healing the Uniform” initiative that we discussed in episode #031. But he’s not a career professional. Instead he came into this because of his own history of being arrested, interrogated, and mistreated by the police. In this conversation he talks about his experiences growing up in coastal Kenya, police profiling on the basis of his dialect and appearance, and introducing that perspective to a training room ..read more