Please register for an in-person or live stream ticket by October 24th. A Zoom link will be sent to registrants participating online.
Join us for a research talk by Dr. Catherine Weaver, Visiting Fulbright Canada Research Chair in Global Governance at the Balsillie School of International Affairs and Associate Professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.
About the Talk: How much international aid is actually reaching the poor in the world today and who is really benefiting from the billions of dollars spent each year in the name of global sustainable development? Transparency Traps: Global Development and the Politics of Aid Data unravels the promises and perils of the so-called transparency revolution in international development. Based on extensive participant observation and over 550 interviews in 14 countries, this book focuses on international efforts to establish accountability standards and improve access to data on over $150 billion in annual aid each year. Ultimately, this research shows that realizing the promise of aid transparency faces numerous challenges: vast supplies of data that are ultimately neither accessible nor useful to aid recipients, riddled with errors and disinformation, and falling far short of providing the kind of aid accountability and effectiveness theorized by its advocates.
Speaker Bio: Catherine Weaver is Associate Dean for academic strategies and Associate Professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, and Visiting Fulbright Canada Research Chair in Global Governance at the Balsillie School of International Affairs. Dr. Weaver researches transparency in international development aid, reforming global economic governance, and the politics of data. She has developed methods to track and dynamically geomap aid and climate adaptation, and is completing two book projects: Transparency Traps: Global Development and the Politics of Open Data and Global Governance and Representation in the 21st Century. Dr. Weaver is author of the award-winning Hypocrisy Trap: The World Bank and the Poverty of Reform (Princeton University Press), and numerous articles and book chapters in outlets such as International Organization, Review of International Political Economy, Review of International Organizations, Ethics and International Affairs, Global Governance, Cambridge University Press, and Oxford University Press.
Moderator Bio: Matias Margulis is Assistant Professor in the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs and Faculty of Land and Food Systems at the University of British Columbia. His interests are in global governance, development, human rights, international law and food policy. In addition to his academic research, Matias has extensive professional experience in the field of international policymaking and is a former Canadian representative to the WTO, OECD, and FAO. He has also advised the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food and the Scottish Parliament and consulted for international NGOs and the Brookings Institution.
Hosted By: School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia; IR Colloquium at the Department of Political Science, University of British Columbia
