Faculty
Summer Institute on Governance & Inclusive Development (summer)
Dr Nicky Pouw
Dr.Nicky Pouw is assistant professor in the Msc in International Development Studies. She was trained as a development economist at the University of Amsterdam (MA) and at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague (PhD) with an individual NWO-WOTRO fellowship.
She completed her PhD on The Characterization and Monitoring of Poverty. Smallholder farmers in rural Uganda at the Free University in 2008 with Professor Jan Wilem Gunning and Professor Chris Elbers. She holds over 10 years of teaching experience in the field of development studies, particularly in courses on household economics, poverty analysis, research methodologies, development theories, and gender and development.
Dr. Pouw has been involved in multiple research projects on poverty assessment, gender mainstreaming, economic literacy, impact of aid, welfare indicators measurement in various countries throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, including Ghana, Uganda, Kenia and Tanzania, and recently in India.
Dr Fred Zaal
Fred Zaal, is a geographer with more than 25 years of experience in rural development research and advisory work in Africa. His expertise includes rural marketing systems, focusing on both arable and livestock value chains, and their impact on rural livelihoods. Other areas of expertise entail the impact of external drivers such as climate and global change on rural development and agricultural production, the impact of innovation on rural agricultural production and its environmental effects, the role of diversification within and outside of agriculture including the impact of tourism and FDI in mining industries on communities, and in agricultural sustainability in drylands, in particular on water harvesting and soil and water conservation.
Dr Anna Laven
holds a MA in Environmental Management from the VU University Amsterdam and a PhD from the University of Amsterdam (UvA). Anna has expertise in analysing global value chains, governance processes and social relations and in identifying more inclusive upgrading strategies for smallholders. She has professional skills in operational research (quantitative and qualitative), multi-stakeholder processes, setting up business ventures and lecturing and supervision of MA students.
Former Faculty
Dr Hebe Verrest
DrHebe Verrest is an assistant professor (UD) in the Department of Geography, Planning and International Development Studies (GPIO) at the UvA. She is a Human Geographer, with a specialisation in Human Geography of Developing Countries
Dr Deepa Narayan
Dr Deepa Narayan is project director of the 15-country World Bank study titled Moving Out of Poverty: Understanding Freedom, Democracy, and Growth from the Bottom Up. From 2002 through 2008 she served as senior adviser in the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management (PREM) Network of the World Bank.
In 2000, she led the Voices of the Poor project for the World Bank. She has longstanding development experience in Asia and Africa while working across sectors for non-governmental organizations, national governments and the United Nations.
Her areas of expertise include scaled up programs in participatory development, empowerment and community-driven development across sectors. She co-led the early work on social capital and its links to wealth creation. Her current interests include poverty reduction and state-building in fragile and conflict-affected context.
Recent publications include
- Moving Out of Poverty: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Mobility
- Moving Out of Poverty: Success from the Bottom Up
- Ending Poverty in South Asia: Ideas that Work
- Measuring Empowerment: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives (2009)
- Empowerment and Poverty Reduction: A Sourcebook (2002)
- and the three-volume Voices of the Poor series (2000).
Kapuscinski Lecturer 2013
Dr Susan Parnell
Sue Parnell is an urban geographer in the Department of Environmental and Geographical Sciences and is the Director of the 'CityLab' at the University of Cape Town (UCT) African Centre for Cities. Prior to her appointment at UCT she taught in the Wits University Geography Department (Johannesburg) and the School of Oriental African Studies (London). She is the author of over 80 academic papers, 4 edited volumes and 2 co-authored books. She is on the Editorial boards of 11 academic journals.