Português
International development involves ideologies and activities ostensibly directed towards the improvement of well-being of populations in the Global South. Mainstream development interventions emphasize forward-looking ideas of progress and advocate for novelty. In so doing, however, the sector is often myopic, as evidenced by countless unintended consequences that stretch beyond interventions’ official life cycle. Whether deemed as success or failure, such interventions leave behind a long trail of tangible and intangible traces. Project AfDevLives explores how development interventions’ representational and material remains are experienced, utilized, and re-appropriated by local actors over time, and how such active immanence of the past affects people’s life-worlds. It weaves together three temporal gazes: prospective (development’s blueprints); retrospective (sediments of the past, shorthanded as interventions’ ‘afterlives’); and present-time lived experience. Consciously de-centering formal development discourse and temporalities, the project develops and applies a phenomenological framework oriented around the embodied interweaving of people, objects, and space. Using an interdisciplinary approach centered on social anthropology, research will be conducted in Kenya, Tanzania, and Mozambique, neighbouring Eastern African countries that are among the highest recipients of development aid and whose past and present hold both continuities and ruptures. The project will unfold via an iterative process involving four complementary work packages: Movement, Image, Storytelling, and Synthesis. Working across work packages, countries, and case studies, the project will pursue three categories of objectives: conceptual (methodological toolkit), empirical (based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork), and practical (aimed at the development sector, local heirs of interventions, and the public at large). The project will result in a robust set of outputs.
| Research Centre | Research Group | Role in Project | Begin Date | End Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CEI-Iscte | Societal and Development Challenges | Partner | 2022-09-01 | 2027-08-31 |
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| Name | Affiliation | Role in Project | Begin Date | End Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anselmo Matusse | -- | Researcher | 2022-09-01 | 2027-08-31 |
| Berenike Eichhorn | PhD Scholar (CEI-Iscte); | Researcher | 2022-09-01 | 2027-08-31 |
| Carla Bertin | Integrated Researcher (CEI-Iscte); | Researcher | 2022-09-01 | 2027-08-31 |
| Francis Ngure | PhD Scholar (CEI-Iscte); | Researcher | 2022-09-01 | 2027-08-31 |
| Keren Kuenberg | PhD Scholar (CEI-Iscte); | Researcher | 2022-09-01 | 2027-08-31 |
| Yonatan N. Gez | Integrated Researcher (CEI-Iscte); | Researcher | 2022-09-01 | 2027-08-31 |
| Marta Patrício | Associate Researcher (CEI-Iscte); | Research Assistant | 2022-09-01 | 2027-08-31 |
| Reference/Code | Funding DOI | Funding Type | Funding Program | Funding Amount (Global) | Funding Amount (Local) | Begin Date | End Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 101041788 | -- | Contract | European Research Council (ERC) - Starting Grant | 1499745 | 1499745 | 2022-09-01 | 2027-08-31 |
| Year | Publication Type | Full Reference |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Scientific journal paper | Gez, Y. N., Médard, C., Kamaara, E., Masese, E., Bertin, C., Chimhete, N....Wahome, E. (2025). Ghosts of bilateralism: Collaborative research on the afterlives of a Finnish-Kenyan water development project. East African Review. 60 |
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With the objective to increase the research activity directed towards the achievement of the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, the possibility of associating scientific projects with the Sustainable Development Goals is now available in Ciência_Iscte. These are the Sustainable Development Goals identified for this project. For more detailed information on the Sustainable Development Goals, click here.
