In this episode Charmaine McCaulay, lead facilitator of the ground-breaking training programme 'Racism in Real Time' interviews Prof Kate Bird, Senior Research Associate with ODI and Director of The Development Hub. This episode explores what in Kate's background made her want to work on decolonisation and her hopes for the podcast series. Kate explores the legitimacy of an elite white woman, with position power, engaging in decolonisation and discusses the extractive nature of much of the research conducted in the majority world. Kate explains why she thinks that ideas matter (and taking action is even more important). Finally, Charmaine and Kate comment on how some in the media have described engaging in decolonisation as 'woke' and how this can encourage people to see it as a 'new front' in the culture wars. They discuss how this encourages people to 'take sides' and to fight and disagree rather than focus their attention on finding ways to move forwards constructively.
Kate is the Director of The Development Hub, Professor of Practice at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Surrey, Senior Research Associate with ODI and Associate with the Chronic Poverty Advisory Network. She brings over 25 years of experience to her work designing and leading multidisciplinary research, training and advisory work.
Charmaine McCaulay is a Senior Associate at The Development Hub. She is the founder and Director of Kokoro Therapy, a company specialising in anti-racism training, therapy, mentoring and coaching. Charmaine has over 25 years of experience as a trainer and expert in addressing racism. She has partnered with Kate Bird from The Development Hubto launch this podcast in decolonising development called ‘The Power Shift: Decolonising Development’ and is co-creating a training programme in decolonising development, which will launch in 2023.
If you’re interested to find out more about Kate's work take a look here: LinkedIn, The Development Hub, ODI
If you’re interested to find out more about Charmaine's work take a look here: Kokoro Therapy, The Development Hub
