Projects
I have led and c0-led a number of large international projects funded by government research councils, specialist funding agencies, governments and humanitarian and development organisations. These have focused on issues including refugee youth volunteering in Uganda, climate change in deltas in Asia, youth citizenship, international volunteering and development, and volunteering in conflicts and emergencies.

Bringing together diverse teams of academics and practitioners across global South and North, and actively working with policy makers, my research and consultancy work has produced actionable insight and knowledge as well as making contributions to academic knowledge.

During my career I have led or co-led research or consultancy projects in the UK, USA, Uganda, Palestine, India, Bangladesh, Tanzania, Nepal, Vietnam, Sudan, South Sudan, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Myanmar and Mauritania.

If you like to find out more about some of my recent or current live projects, visit the links on this page, or the Volunteering, Humanitarian Crises and Development Research Peak pages of Northumbria University.

I have also been involved in projects exploring and testing new approaches to linking academic research and policy makers. To find our more about these visit:
Capabilities in Academic Policy Engagement and Insights North East

Volunteering for Climate Adaptation and Disasters (VOCAD)
This project aims to understand the roles of voluntary or unpaid work in disaster response and climate adaptation in the Indian Sundarbans. Funded as part of the UKRI/GCRF Living Deltas Hub and by Northumbria University, the research aims to:

• conceptualise the different kinds of voluntary labour mobilised for climate adaptation and disaster response in the Indian Sundarbans
  
• analyse the different ways voluntary labour is managed and governed in strategies for adaptation and crises response by the civil society and private sector
• assess the impacts of voluntary labour on adaptation, climate response and participants’ lives

To find out more about the work, including how we are using the findings to increase understanding and awareness of the role of voluntary labour in crises response and adaptation, visit the VOCAD Project Pages.

Volunteering Together: Blending Knowledge and Skills for Development
This research project, in partnership with the International NGO, VSO, explored how different types of volunteering come together, how different combinations of volunteers may work in different sorts of ways, and what kinds of impacts and outputs this produces, and for whom. Focusing particularly on blended volunteering VSO’s programming and beyond, the research focused on volunteering in three case study countries: Tanzania; Uganda; and Nepal.

To find out more about the research the large team that delivered it across the research contexts, visit the project research page, or VSO's website.

Refugee Youth Volunteering Uganda (RYVU)
RYVU is a large international collaborative research project funded by the UK's Economic and Social Research Centre/Global Challenges Research Fund. Bringing together two Ugandan (Makerere and Uganda Martyrs) universities and two UK universities (Northumbria and Loughborough) as well as a network of NGOs and young refugees themselves, RYVU aimed to:

• Develop new understandings of volunteering that reflect the experiences of refugees in Uganda
• Build knowledge on the relationships between volunteering and the livelihoods of displaced young people
• Investigate how these impact on their skills, employability and the inequalities they experience.

To find our more, including downloading project policy briefs, papers and interactive games designed to help foster debate and insight around volunteering and displacement, visit the project website.