The TWP Community Podcast

In this podcast series Alina Rocha Menocal, Director of the TWP CoP, discusses a variety of topics from a thinking and working politically perspective with a range of external experts. If you have ideas for a podcast topic and/or would like to feature, please email s.mujuru@bham.ac.uk

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This conversation focuses on the work that the Institute for Integrated Transitions (IFIT)’s Colombia team is doing to encourage dialogue and collaboration in Congress across party lines in what is a highly polarised political context. Martha Maya and Maria José Daza Bohórquez share reflections and lessons from IFIT‘s experience in brokering spaces for collaboration and engagement among young congressmen and women in Colombia.

In this podcast, Alina Rocha Menocal interviews Dr Nicol Nixon, Sumaya Saluja and Sadat Shibli on The Asia Foundation’s experience in fostering coalition-building, featuring examples from Bangladesh, Nepal, The Philippines, Sri Lanks, Thailand and Timor-Leste

This interview recorded on the eve of Nigeria’s Presidential election in February 2023 discusses the importance of a TWP approach for understanding Nigeria’s political economy context and designing/implementing effective development projects. The interview with two Associates of The Policy Practice, Dr Suwaiba Ahmad and Sunny Kulutuye, reflects on the two speakers’ professional experience of applying a TWP approach to policy and programming problems in this context.

Dadirai is the Lead Governance Advisor for CAFOD. In the last 7 years Dadirai has been at the forefront of advocating for robust context analysis (PEA) to anchor programming decisions – developing an internal guidance and providing ongoing accompaniment of staff through the analysis. In this podcast, she tells us how she arrived to TWP, how she developed her context analysis guidance, and her experience of landing PEA and TWP principles with partners on the ground in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

In this episode, Professor Heather Marquette tells us what lessons are emerging for ‘Thinking and Working Politically’ from research from the SOCACE programme. She talks about how SOCACE research offers new insights on what it means to TWP, how we can find different ways to work on SOC, illicit finance and corruption that are better able to meet the needs that emerge when working in different contexts and how TWP opens a space for identifying potential tensions and unintended consequences.

In this episode, Alina Rocha Menocal interviewed Duncan Green, who is is a leading thinker on international development, senior strategic adviser to Oxfam GB, and Professor in Practice at LSE. Duncan tells us about a course he helps to run called GELI – Influencing for Senior Leaders; analysis, strategy and practice, and why it is all about TWP. You can also watch the video here.

In this episode, Alina Rocha Menocal interviewed Kerry Selvester, Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Coordinator for MUVA & Director of the Mozambican NGO ANSA, and Sam Sharp, Senior Research Officer in Politics and Governance at ODI, on lessons and insights from MUVA – a women’s economic empowerment programme in Mozambique established with a specific mandate to test, learn and adapt. You can also watch the video here.

In this episode, Alina Rocha Menocal had the pleasure of interviewing Idayat Hassan, director of the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) (Abuja, Nigeria), on what is needed for greater democracy support. You can also watch the video here.

In this episode, Wilfred Mwamba, DAI Deputy Chief of Party for the USAID Local Governance Activity in Zambia, gives great insights into how he uses TWP in practice, with examples from his work in Nigeria and DRC. You can also watch the video here.