Judith Kent and Kate Whyte, who were both at FCDO until very recently, share their insights and wisdom as fellow travellers in the TWP journey, drawing on their 5+ decades of collective experience working on foreign affairs, conflict and international development.

Ashley is the co-founder and co-director of the Centre on Armed Groups, an organisation that supports research on and engagement with armed groups. In this conversation, she tells us about her experiences and challenges in working in contexts under the control of armed groups. Ashley highlights how the Centre finds politically smart pathways to engagement in order to understand the perspectives the different players within these challenging contexts.

In this conversation, Alina chats to Greg Power’s about his recent book, Inside the Political Mind: The Human side of Politics, and How it Shapes Development which explores how social norms, public expectations and the personal interests of Members of Parliament influence the path of political development. The book draws on Greg’s experience of working with political leaders in more than sixty countries.

Alina Rocha Menocal has a conversation with Martha Maya and Maria José Daza Bohórquez from the Institute for Integrated Transitions (IFIT), about their work on encouraging dialogue and collaboration in the Colombian Congress across party lines within a highly polarised political context.

Alina Rocha Menocal interviews Dr Nicola Nixon, Sumaya Saluja and Sadat Shibli on The Asia Foundation’s experience fostering coalition-building, featuring examples from Bangladesh, Nepal, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Timor-Leste

This interview recorded on the eve of Nigeria’s Presidential election in February 2023 discusses the importance of a TWP approach for understanding Nigeria’s political economy context and designing/implementing effective development projects. The interview with two Associates of The Policy Practice, Dr Suwaiba Ahmad and Sunny Kulutuye, reflects on the two speakers’ professional experience of applying a TWP approach to policy and programming problems in this context.

Dadirai is the Lead Governance Advisor for CAFOD. In the last 7 years Dadirai has been at the forefront of advocating for robust context analysis (PEA) to anchor programming decisions - developing an internal guidance and providing ongoing accompaniment of staff through the analysis. In this podcast, she tells us how she arrived to TWP, how she developed her context analysis guidance, and her experience of landing PEA and TWP principles with partners on the ground in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

In this interview, Professor Heather Marquette tells us what lessons are emerging for 'Thinking and Working Politically' from research from the SOCACE programme. She talks about how SOCACE research offers new insights on what it means to TWP, how we can find different ways to work on SOC, illicit finance and corruption that are better able to meet the needs that emerge when working in different contexts and how TWP opens a space for identifying potential tensions and unintended consequences.