Publications from Staff on the Social Development Practice MSc

Discover a selection of the most recent publications from staff on the Social Development Practice MSc.

The Social Development Practice MSc is taught by staff and associate teaching fellows across The Bartlett Development Planning Unit who are held in high esteem by their peers internationally and renowned for their contribution to academic thinking and development practice.

Read publications from the Social Development Practice MSc staff below.

Professor Julian Walker

Professor Julian Walker is the co-Programme Leader of the Social Development Practice MSc, the Director of Training and Advisory Services at The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, and the Co-Director of the department's Gender Policy and Planning programme. Julian is a social development practitioner with a background in social anthropology, and his work engages with social policy, and mainstream development policy, to understand, and address, the relationship between diverse social identities and experiences of development, with a particular focus on gender, disability, and age, and their intersections.

Read publications from Professor Julian Walker: Walker, J. H., & Tebbutt, E. (2022). The informal economy as a provider of assistive technology: lessons from Indonesia and Sierra Leone. Health Promotion International. doi:10.1093/heapro/daac005 Walker, J., & Ossul-Vermehren, I. (2021). (Re-) constructing Disability through Research: Methodological Challenges of Intersectional Research in Informal Urban Settlements. In Inclusive Urban Development in the Global South (pp. 167-181). Routledge. Walker, J., Koroma, B., Sellu, S.A., & Rigon, A. (2021). The social regulation of livelihoods in unplanned settlements in Freetown: implications for strategies of formalisation. International Development Planning Review, pp.1-23. Walker, J., Bau Carvalho, M. and Diaconescu, I. (eds). (2020) Urban Claims and the Right to the City: Grassroots Perspectives from London and Salvador da Bahia. London: UCL Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781787356382 Rigon, A., Walker, J., & Koroma, B. (2020). Beyond formal and informal: Understanding urban informalities from Freetown. Cities, 105. doi:10.1016/j.cities.2020.102848 Walker, J., Rifai, A., Fuad, J., & Kurniawan, V. (2020). Country Capacity Assessment for Assistive Technologies: Informal Markets Study, Indonesia. London, UK: GDI Hub. Walker, J., Sallam, N., Sesay, S., & Gandi, I. (2020). Country Capacity Assessment for Assistive Technologies: Informal Markets Study, Sierra Leone. London, UK: GDI Hub. Onyebueke, V. U., Walker, J., Lipietz, B., Ujah, O., & Ibezim-Ohaeri, V. (2020). Evicting the poor in the ‘overriding public interest’: Crisis of rights and interests, and contestations in Nigerian cities. Cities, 101. doi:10.1016/j.cities.2020.102675 Walker, J., & Butcher, S. L. (2016). Beyond one-dimensional representation: Challenges for Neighbourhood Planning in socially diverse urban settlements in Kisumu, Kenya. International Development Planning Review. doi:10.3828/idpr.2016.16 Walker, J., Berekashvili, N., & Lomidze, N. (2014). Valuing Time: Time Use Survey, the Capability Approach, and Gender Analysis. Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 15 (1), 47-59. doi:10.1080/19452829.2013.837033 Walker, J. (2013). Time poverty, gender and well-being: lessons from the Kyrgyz Swiss Swedish Health Programme. Development in Practice, 23 (1), 57-68. doi:10.1080/09614524.2013.751357 Walker, J., Frediani, A. A., & Trani , J. F. (2013). Gender, difference and urban change: implications for the promotion of well-being?. Environment and Urbanization, 25 (1). doi:10.1177/0956247812468996

Professor Andrea Rigon

Professor Andrea Rigon is the co-Programme Leader of the Social Development Practice MSc, and posseses over 15 years of research, consultancy and project management experience in the international development and urban development sectors working for NGOs, academia, and consulting for the United Nations, international donors and governments. Andrea's experiences include being involved in the process of the World Social Forum, in the DFID-funded participatory research initiative Participate: Knowledge, he is Founder of the Sierra Leone Urban Research Centre, and is Chair of the Board of Catalytic Action, an organisation founded by former students of The Bartlett Development Planning Unit.

Read publications from Professor Andrea Rigon

Walker, J., Rigon, A., & Koroma, B. (2023). The Governance and Regulation of the Informal Economy: Implications for livelihoods and decent work. In The Routledge Handbook on Livelihoods in the Global South (1st ed., pp. 237–245). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003014041-25
Rigon, A., Dabaj, J., & Conti, R. (2023). Belonging and agency: The transformatory power of participatory design with children affected by displacement. In A Handbook of Children and Young People’s Participation (2nd ed., pp. 265–274). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003367758-41
Rigon, A. (2022). Diversity, justice and slum upgrading: An intersectional approach to urban development. Habitat International, 130, 102691-. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2022.102691
Walker, J., Koroma, B., Sellu, S. A., & Rigon, A. (2022). The social regulation of livelihoods in unplanned settlements in Freetown: implications for strategies of formalisation. International Development Planning Review, 44(1), 33–54. https://doi.org/10.3828/idpr.2021.
Fiori, J., Espada, F., Rigon, A., Taithe, B., & Zakaria, R. (Eds.). (2021). Amidst the debris. Humanitarianism and the end of liberal order. Hurst Publishers.
Rigon, A., & Castán Broto, V. (Eds.). (2021). Inclusive urban development in the Global South. Intersectionality, inequalities, and community. Routledge.
Walker, J., Koroma, B., Sellu, S.A., & Rigon, A. (2021). The social regulation of livelihoods in unplanned settlements in Freetown: implications for strategies of formalisation. International Development Planning Review, pp.1-23.
Rigon, A., Walker, J., & Koroma, B. (2020). Beyond formal and informal: Understanding urban informalities from Freetown. Cities, 105. doi:10.1016/j.cities.2020.102848
Carpi, E., Field, J.A., Dicker, S.I., & Rigon, A. (2020). From livelihoods to leisure and back: refugee ‘self-reliance’ as collective practices in Lebanon, India and Greece. Third World Quarterly, pp.1-20.

Dr Afia Afenah

Dr Afia Afenah is an Associate Lecturer (Teaching) and Personal Tutor at the Arts and Science Department. She is a social anthropologist working on urban diversity and migration, poverty and inequality, and the role of non-state actors in local governance. Prior to her doctorate, she worked as a strategic consultant for the built environment alongside spatial planners, architects, engineers and economists. In collaboration with a colleague from the University of Essex, she currently explores the uneven effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on people of colour in the UK, through qualitative research. Using an intersectionality approach, their enquiry focuses on how cross-cutting modes of discrimination intersect and amplify existing levels of inequality since the first nationwide lockdown began in late March 2020.

Read publications from Dr Afia Afenah: Afenah, A. (2021). From collegiality to gatekeeping: modes of everyday governance in Old Fadama, Accra. In Rigon, A., & Castán Broto, V. (Eds.). (2021). Inclusive urban development in the Global South. Intersectionality, inequalities, and community. Routledge. Afenah, A. (2012). Engineering a millennium city in Accra, Ghana: the old Fadama intractable issue. Urban Forum, 23 (4), 527-540. doi:10.1007/s12132-012-9155-z

Dr Jordana Ramalho

Dr Jordana Ramalho has over 15 years' experience working in the field of diversity and socially inclusive community development with non-governmental organisations based in the UK, the Philippines, East Africa, Panama and Canada, on programmes relating to land tenure insecurity and homelessness, disaster risk management, young offending, gender mainstreaming, HIV/AIDS and food security. Much of this work has focused on building institutional capacities to work with marginalised groups and to apply and embed an intersectional approach to their development practice.

Read publications from Dr Jordana Ramalho: Ramalho, J. (2020). Engendering disaster risk management and resilience-building: The significance of the everyday in evaluations of the exceptional. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 50. doi:10.1016/j.ijdrr.2020.101830 Ramalho, J. (2020). Hope, home and insecurity: Gendered labours of resilience among the urban poor of Metro Cebu, the Philippines. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. doi:10.1177/0263775820959337 Ramalho, J. (2019). Empowerment in the era of resilience-building: gendered participation in community-based (disaster) risk management in the Philippines. International Development Planning Review, 41 (2), 129-148. doi:10.3828/idpr.2018.25 Ramalho, J. (2019). Worlding aspirations and resilient futures: Framings of risk and contemporary city-making in Metro Cebu, the Philippines. Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 60 (1), 24-36. doi:10.1111/apv.12208 Chant, S., Klett-Davie, M., & Ramalho, J. (2017). Challenges and potential solutions for adolescent girls in urban settings: a rapid evidence review. London: Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence.

Ignacia Ossul Vermehren

Ignacia Ossul Vermehren is social development practitioner, with an MSc in Social Development Practice and a PhD in Development Planning at the Bartlett Development Planning Unit, University College London. She has worked with multidisciplinary teams doing research, and as a project manager both in academic institutions as well as in NGOs. She also has field experience in Sierra Leone, Kenya, Tanzania, Brazil, Chile, Indonesia and The Philippines.

Read publications from Ignacia Ossul Vermehren

Ossul-Vermehren, I. (2018). The politics of home-making: a gender-based approach to self-help housing. Revista INVI, 33(93). 9-51.
Ossul-Vermehren, I. (2018). Lo político de hacer-hogar: una mirada de género a la vivienda autoconstruída. Revista INVI, 33(93). 9-51.
Berroeta, H., Carvalho, L., Di Masso, A., & Ossul Vermehren, I. (2017). Apego al lugar: una aproximación psicoambiental a la vinculación afectiva con el entorno en procesos de reconstrucción del hábitat residencial. Revista INVI, 32(91), 113–139.
Ossul-Vermehren, I. (2018). Allegados. In A. Ledeneva (Ed.), The Global Encyclopedia of Informality, volume 2 (pp. 19–23). London: UCL PRESS.
Fernandes, A., Frediani A., Ossul Vermehren, I., Morgado Mendoza M. and Risi, F. (Eds.). (2018). Collective Practices, Instruments for Collective Action and the Right to the City in Salvador, Bahia/Práticas Coletivas, Instrumentos para Ação e o Direito à Cidade em Salvador, Bahia. London: UCL Development Planning Unit.