London International Development Centre (LIDC) podcasts

We had a great time talking to Frances Leach, Media Officer with CAFOD - the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development. We caught up with Frances just as she was being assigned to work on supporting Ukraine as part of the Disasters Emergency Committee. We discussed why careers in global development are so often the preserve of the elite, whether and how to volunteer, what Cop 27 holds in store and what lessons Frances would like to share with those embarking on their career. 

Enjoy!

A few months into the Covid-19 pandemic, we had the opportunity to sit down with Grace Avila Casanova, co-Founder of Impacto International and a driving force behind the push towards impact entrepreneurship. We wanted to know what impact entrepreneurship, and why Grace thinks it is a more positive force for change in the global development sphere. Here's her brief yet lucid explanation: tweet us at @LIDC_UK and let us know if you agree with Grace. 

In this episode, we talk to Gustavo Giraldes, who joined us from Brazil where we works on governmental relations at a Brazilian Tech company. We met Gustavo when he successfully applied for a space on our internship programme. In this podcast, he reflects on his experience interning with us, and describes how his internship complimented the work that he did as a volunteer while studying for his Masters degree at SOAS here in London. 

Meet Dr Somya Mallapudi. Somya is an individual member of LIDC, and  is currently based in Hyderabad, where she is pursuing a PhD in Global Health. She spoke to LIDC’s Charine John about her interest in non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Her interest in NCD has led her to examine the impact of health warnings on tobacco products, particularly in low- and middle-income countries.  It was fascinating to hear about her research, and we are delighted to learn that she decided to join LIDC  because  she recognised that doing so would give her access to our extensive network of academics, students and activists. We pleased to have Somya as part of the LIDC family, and we’re grateful to her for sharing her passion for why it is that we should continue to shine a spotlight on the effect of tobacco on the health of those in low- and middle-income countries. This podcast is under 10 minutes. Enjoy!

For the second in our ‘Future Leaders’ series, we spoke to Eniola John Philips. Eniola is currently based in Nairobi, Kenya, where she works with Shelter Afrique. We met Eniola through LIDC's Communication and Digital Media internship programme which she joined in March 2020, while studying for her MSc in Urban Planning with the Development Planning Unit at UCL. Eniola spoke to LIDC’s Charine John about interning during a pandemic, and how to do fieldwork over Zoom.  

LIDC’s Charine John recently caught up with ex-LIDC intern, Dr Praise Adeyemo. They met when LIDC hosted an induction for students taking part in the ‘One Health’ MSc jointly run by the RVC & LSHTM (both LIDC member institutions). We talked to her about her experience on the course, how this led to her joining and interning with LIDC, and what she has been doing since she graduated. Since this conversation was recorded, Praise has returned to Nigeria where she currently works as Program Manager with the WHO’s AMR School Program in Lagos.

2021 is the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s ‘International Year of Fruit and Vegetables’ so we were delighted to have this chance to discuss interventions and technologies that can both assist smallholder farmers to gain access to markets and help improve equitable distribution of fruit and vegetables.

In this podcast, LIDC's Charine John speaks to Bhavani Shankar (Sheffield University); Suneetha Kadiyala (LSHTM); Rikin Gandhi (Digital Green)  and Gregory Cooper (SOAS) about their work on the  Market Intervention for Nutritional Improvement (MINI) project, which works to improve access to nutritionally vulnerable markets in India and Bangladesh. Enjoy - and share! Thank you. 

In this episode, we had the pleasure of talking to the accomplished and dynamic Dr. Ifeanyi M. Nsofor, MBBS, MCommH (Liverpool). He's Senior New Voices Fellow at the Aspen Institute and Senior Atlantic Fellow for Health Equity at George Washington University. He's also a 2006 Ford Foundation International Fellow and one of New African magazine's 2020's '100 Most Influential Africans.' We're delighted he found time to join LIDC's Communications Coordinator, Charine John, from Abuja, to discuss issues he feels passionately about, such as equity in vaccine distribution and why it is that the world's media doggedly refuses to highlight African success stories in its coverage of global health. Enjoy, and let us know what you think: tweet @LIDC_UK and @ekemma.