Stephen Brown is Professor of Political Science at the University of Ottawa. He worked for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for several years and has served as a consultant for several development-related organizations, including UNDP, the Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD/DAC) and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). He is the author of numerous articles and book chapters on foreign aid, as well as the editor of Struggling for Effectiveness: CIDA and Canadian Foreign Aid (2012) and co-editor of Rethinking Canadian Aid (Second Edition, 2016) and The Securitization of Foreign Aid (2016). Further information can be found at https://stephenbrown.xyz.
Topics of interest:
- foreign aid/development cooperation
- policy coherence for development
- international LGBTQI+ rights
- African politics
- democratization
- political violence
- peacebuilding and transitional justice
Rhonda Gossen is a former diplomat with Global Affairs Canada, assigned to Philippines, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Ghana. She is currently a senior consultant with UNDP, working on early recovery, forced displacement and refugee response, resilience, stabilization, development solutions to internal displacement and strategic planning. She worked as development advisor to the humanitarian coordinator for the Rohingya Crisis in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh and to UNHCR Lebanon on the Syrian refugee crisis. In addition to UNDP, she has undertaken assignments with the World Bank, UNICEF, UNHCR, in Pakistan, Lebanon, Nepal, Nigeria, South Sudan, Southern Africa, Bangladesh, Azerbaijan Afghanistan, and Iran. She is the author of an upcoming book with McGill-Queens University Press.
Topics of interest:
- Foreign aid/development cooperation
- Humanitarian response and humanitarian-development-peace nexus
- Disaster and crisis response
- Gender equality, women’s rights
- Preventing violent extremism
Laura Macdonald is a Professor in the Department of Political Science and the Institute of Political Economy at Carleton University. She has published numerous articles in journals and edited collections on such issues as the role of non-governmental organizations in development, global civil society, citizenship struggles in Latin America, Canadian development assistance and the political impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement on human rights and democracy in the three member states. She is author of Supporting Civil Society: The Political Impact of NGO Assistance to Central America (Macmillan/St. Martin’s 1997), co-author of Women, Democracy, and Globalization in North America: A Comparative Study (Palgrave Macmillan 2006), and co-editor of Post-Neoliberalism in the Americas (Palgrave Macmillan 2009, with Arne Ruckert), Contentious Politics in North America (Palgrave Macmillan 2009, with Jeffrey Ayres) and North America in Question (University of Toronto Press 2012, with Jeffrey Ayres).
Sectoral areas of interest:
- Democracy and human rights
- Canadian foreign assistance
- Development theories
- Non-governmental organizations and civil society
- International trade and regionalization
Geographic areas of interest:
- Latin America (especially Mexico)
- North America
Elizabeth McAllister has served in leadership positions in the international development community for over 25 years. From 1997 to 2005, she held a number of senior assignments at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., including Director of the Operations Evaluation Department (OED), Director of External Affairs and United Nations Relations and Special Advisor to the Vice Presidency for East Asia and Pacific.
Prior to joining the World Bank, Ms. McAllister held executive positions in the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) including Director General of Performance Review, Director General for Latin American and the Caribbean Region, Director of the China Country Program and Director of Women in Development. She twice chaired the DAC Working Group on Women In Development From 1985 to 1988, she was Counselor for Development in Jakarta, Indonesia.
In 2007/8, she chaired the International Panel for the Independent Review of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research System (report available on www.cgiar.org/externalreview/).
Ms McAllister enjoys an active practice in international development focuses on organizational strategy, results based management, evaluation management and gender analysis. Her clients include the World Bank, the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID), the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Canadian International Development Agency and the Caribbean Development Bank. She is currently a member of the Advisory Council to the Gregg Center for the Study of War and Society at the University of New Brunswick and an advisor to organizations working for people with disabilities.
Ms. McAllister is a recipient of numerous awards for community service and leadership, including a 1994 Governor General’s Commemorative Medal in her native Canada. A graduate of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government (MPA) and the University of New Brunswick, she lives in Ottawa.
Hunter McGill is an international development policy consultant and Senior Fellow at the School of International Development and Global Studies at the University of Ottawa. His consulting practice focuses on good bilateral donor practice, aid effectiveness, and humanitarian assistance. He spent 30 years at the Canadian International Development Agency, and worked at the OECD for five years as head of peer review and evaluation operations for the Development Assistance Committee (DAC). He is a member of the boards of the Friends of the Rideau, the Rideau Waterway Land Trust, and Heritage Ottawa.
Lauchlan T. Munro is Professor in the School of International Development and Global Studies at the University of Ottawa. Before joining uOttawa in July 2012, Lauchlan worked as Vice-President Corporate Strategy and Regional Management at Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC) from 2008 to 2012. From 2004 to 2009, he served as Director of Policy and Planning and Chief of Staff to the IDRC President. Prior to joining IDRC, Lauchlan worked for UNICEF from 1989 to 2003 in DR Congo, Uganda, Zimbabwe and at New York HQ. From 1985 to 1987, he was a member of the Royal Bhutanese Civil Service. He has taught project management at Fordham University, sociology and public economics at the University of Manchester, and economics at Sherubtse College. He twice served as Director of his School (2012-16 and 2018). His textbook (co-edited with Mahmoud Masaeli), Canada and the Challenges of International Development and Globalization (University of Ottawa Press, 2018), was shortlisted for the PROSE Award for the best social science textbook published in North America in 2018.
Topics of interest:
- National development planning
- Poverty, human rights and social protection
- The economics of risk and uncertainty
- Public sector management, especially aid effectiveness and project management
- Children and development policy (health, education, social protection)
Geographic interests: Canada, Bhutan, Zimbabwe.
Betty Plewes has had a long term interest in African development, gender and non-governmental organizations. After teaching in Ontario she worked as teacher trainer for three years in northern Nigeria. Following graduate studies in anthropology, she joined the CUSO staff where she worked as Director of Overseas Programs and was a founding member of Partnership Africa Canada which supported African non-governmental organizations. For nearly a decade, she was President and CEO of the Canadian Council for International Co-operation, acting as spokesperson on behalf of the 100 members of the Council with the media, Members of Parliament, and with the public. In 1995 she participated in the creation of the Voluntary Sector Roundtable, a group of organizations that came together to strengthen the voice of Canada’s voluntary sector with the federal government. Her experience in the voluntary sector includes serving on boards, editing a journal on the sector and writing on many aspects of sector work.
Areas of interest
- Gender and international development
- Africa
- Voluntary sector organizations, issues and trends (domestic and international)
Diana Rivington is a consultant with expertise in gender equality and social equity. She enjoyed a long career at the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) where her last assignment was as Director, Human Development and Gender Equality. Prior to joining CIDA, she worked for World University Service of Canada, CUSO, and Canada World Youth. She has worked and lived in Jamaica, Philippines, Colombia, and Honduras. She is fluent in French and in Spanish.
John Sinclair, born in the UK, has lived in Canada since 1974. After studying economics at Cambridge University, he has followed a career as an international development practitioner, mainly working for CIDA and the World Bank. For both these institutions, he was involved in strategic policy issues as well as leading country programs. With the World Bank he was active in shifting its agenda to a pro-poor focus, as well as working on effectiveness issues, including the Bank’s major decentralization process. He is a Senior Fellow at the University of Ottawa’s School of International Development and Global Studies. He was a Distinguished Associate of the North-South Institute, Canada’s principal development think-tank. He has worked as a consultant with the World Bank, AsDB, IFAD, UNICEF and the Ford Foundation. As a member of the McLeod Group, he is now a thinker/policy advocate on development issues, a role reinforced by writing in journals and newspapers.
His geographic focus is Africa and Asia. He has lived as a development professional in Sri Lanka, Egypt and most recently Indonesia. Major countries of involvement include India, China, Bangladesh, Nepal and Ghana.
His current thematic interests are global development architecture, G7/G20, development/aid effectiveness, post-Busan agendas, Agenda 2030/SDGs, evaluation, country programming/donor performance, results, LDCs/fragile states, emerging economies/BRICS, governance/corruption, institutional effectiveness, roles of CSOs/NGOs, inclusiveness and decentralization.
Maïka Sondarjee is an assistant professor at the School of International Development and Global Studies, University of Ottawa. She obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto and held a SSHRC Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Montreal. In addition to her social theory research on inclusive practices at the World Bank, she edited the book Perspectives Féministes en Relations Internationales (PUM, 2022), which brings together 30 contributors from 12 countries who explore feminist and gendered approaches to world politics. She also co-edited the book White Saviorism in International Development: Theories, Practices and Lived Experiences (Daraja Press, 2023) with Themrise Khan and Kanakulya Dickson. She was awarded the Talent Award from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) in 2021, and the Alice Wilson Award from the Royal Society of Canada in 2020. She has published in journals such as International Studies Quarterly, Third World Quarterly, International Studies Perspectives, and Global Society. In addition to her regular contributions to the newspaper Le Devoir, she aims to support social activists and social movements and to be an engaged academic.