About

Established in September 2010, the Devpolicy Blog provides a platform for the best in aid and development analysis, research and policy comment, with global coverage and a focus on Australia, the Pacific and Papua New Guinea. As of July 2024, Devpolicy has published more than 4,300 posts from more than 1,500 contributors.

The Blog is run out of the Development Policy Centre housed in the Crawford School of Public Policy in the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific at The Australian National University.

The Devpolicy Blog editorial team is overseen by Robin Davies and includes Amita Monterola, Sadhana Sen and Jackie Hanafie. Contact the editors.

The views expressed in this forum are those of the individual authors and do not represent the views of the Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU, the Development Policy Centre, or the institutions to which the authors are attached. The Devpolicy Blog requires authors to disclose any relevant affiliations and conflicts of interest.

Comments on the Blog are moderated. Differing opinions are encouraged. Read our blog submission and commenting guidelines.

Click on the headings below to learn more about the Blog’s history, our cross-post and re-use policy, funding for Devpolicy, and what people are saying about us.

The Devpolicy Blog provides a platform for the best in aid and development analysis, research and policy comment, with global coverage and a strong focus on Australia and its immediate region. Established in 2010, the blog is run by the Development Policy Centre at the Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University. The Devpolicy Blog editorial team consists of Robin Davies, Stephen Howes, Amita Monterola, Sadhana Sen, and Jackie Hanafie.

Our readers are analysts, policymakers, academics, researchers, advocates, development practitioners, public servants, consultants and students. While their fields of interests converge, their knowledge, experience and perspectives vary. Our three areas of focus are Australian aid, the Pacific and Papua New Guinea, and global development policy.

Unsolicited blog posts are welcome, though publication is not guaranteed, and revisions may be requested. Acceptance of articles is based on quality and relevance. All points of view are welcome.

General guidelines for posts are that they should be:

• no longer than 1000 words
• attributed to individuals (not an organisation or anonymous author) and
• must have sources provided as hyperlinks (not footnotes).

Authors are encouraged to include a photo (feature image) to accompany their submission. You must hold the rights to, or demonstrate that you have permission to use, any photos you submit . All articles and photos accepted for publication will be published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Submissions should also include a photo and one sentence biography for each author.

Submissions should be sent to the blog editors.

The blog editors will only communicate with blog authors, not with intermediaries. Rare exceptions will be made in the case of ‘VIP’ blogs, e.g. blogs written by Ministers.

Authors who have affiliations or conflicts of interest that readers should be aware of must declare them in a disclosure statement. Disclosure statements should include information on any relevant: sources of funding/support (financial or in-kind) for the work; employment/consultancy inputs or arrangements; professional or personal affiliations and holdings. If you are unsure whether a particular affiliation or interest should be disclosed, please discuss this with the blog editors at the time of submission.

Final decisions on disclosure requirements rest with the blog editors.

Detailed guidelines for posts are laid out in this guide [PDF]. Please follow them, but don’t be intimidated. We run a flexible and informal blog. We do try hard to avoid spelling and grammar mistakes. When in doubt, be consistent!

We may edit your post. We will send you a revised post if the changes are major. If they are small, you will have to trust us. We will make as few changes as possible.

Some articles may be promoted to regional outlets for republication. If you do not want us to promote your blog, please let the blog editors know. Note that regional media may republish under a Creative Commons licence even if we don’t promote your article.

We welcome comments on blogs. Comments may be edited (without consultation) for grammar and punctuation. We will not publish personal attacks. We may remove part of your comment if we think that part constitutes a personal attack. Criticism of organisations as against individuals is welcome if it serves a good purpose. It should not be gratuitous, but well-founded, based either on experience or argument. We welcome robust debate, but avoid sweeping, unfounded attacks.

While we like to publish as many comments as possible, and do not subject them to the same level of quality control as blog posts, we may hold back comments which contain harsh criticism with no attempt at all to give that criticism a justified base.

Commenters who have affiliations that readers should be aware of, or conflicts of interest, must declare them. Commenters should identify themselves by their full names unless there are good reasons for not doing so. Accusations of illegal conduct are unlikely to be published.

The Blog was born out of a desire to broaden and deepen the conversations on aid and development in the region – both the voices represented and the topics covered.

Devpolicy Blog’s first blog post, ‘Why Australia needs an aid plan’, was written by then Development Policy Centre Deputy Director Matthew Morris, was posted on 1 September 2010.  Morris not only published this first blog, but came up with the idea of having a Blog, got it off the ground, and edited it until he left the Centre in 2011.

From just four blogs in that first month, Devpolicy moved to publishing a daily blog (on week-days) in October 2011. We haven’t looked back since, and continue to publish daily.

Over the years, the Blog has been edited by a small, dedicated team. Stephen Howes oversaw the Devpolicy Blog from 2011 to 2023, in collaboration with a number of co-editors. Jonathan Pryke edited the blog between 2011 and 2015, Camilla Burkot from 2015 to 2017, Sachini Muller from 2018 to May 2019, Rohan Fox from May to mid-June 2019, Holly Lawton to November 2019, Lydia Papandrea from November 2019 to July 2022,  Karen Downing from June 2021 to July 2023, and Anne Moorhead from June 2021 to January 2024. Ashlee Betteridge was an editor for various periods since 2011, and oversaw its design and functionality between 2013-2021.

The Devpolicy Blog underwent extensive redesigns in 2013, 2017 and 2024 to better suit readers’ needs, and continual adjustments are made to keep improving the site. Suggestions and corrections are always welcome. Future Theory hosts, has designed, updates and trouble-shoots the Blog.

All posts published on the Devpolicy Blog are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This means that posts on this blog may be reposted provided that a) it is for non-commercial purposes; b) the original author of the work is credited; and c) the Devpolicy Blog is credited and a link back to the original post included, and d) changes to the original post, if any, are indicated.

The Creative Commons licence only applies to original material published by the Devpolicy Blog and does not necessarily apply to material cross-posted from another source with their permission. Where this is the case, this is noted in the byline at the end of the post. To request permission to republish these posts, please contact the original source.

Please contact us if you have any questions regarding cross-posting and re-use.

The Centre’s work is supported through funding from various organisations.

Harold Mitchell AC announced a donation from the Harold Mitchell Foundation to the Development Policy Centre of $2.5 million over five years in November 2012, which has supported the centre’s core functions, enabled it to develop its research programs and outreach work, and to run initiatives such as the annual Mitchell Oration and Mitchell Humanitarian Award. The support of the Harold Mitchell Foundation has been crucial to the centre’s growth.

Funding from the Harold Mitchell Foundation has been matched by a mix of cash and in-kind funding from The Australian National University and Crawford School of Public Policy.

The  Gates Foundation has provided support since 2014 for us to continue our research into Australian and New Zealand aid.

We receive funding from the Australian aid program in support of our work on PNG in partnership with the University of Papua New Guinea, and for research on state and societal responses to corruption in PNG in collaboration with the University of Birmingham’s Developmental Leadership Program.

We also receive funding from the Australian aid program through the Pacific Research Program for research relating to economic development in the Pacific, including work on labour mobility.

The ANU College of Asia and the Pacific contributed to the costs of running the blog in 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022.

We acknowledge funding and support from The Asia Foundation, The Asian Development Bank, the University of Papua New Guinea and the University of the South Pacific in support of the various conferences we co-organise.

An anonymous donor provides funding to support our PNG and Pacific Greg Taylor Scholars.

We also gratefully accept donations from the public.

devpolicy@anu.edu.au

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