Dr Gerard Prinsen PhD, MA

Contact details

• Ph: extension 83636
  Location: 3.19, Social Sciences Tower
  Campus: Manawatu - Palmerston North

Qualifications

• Doctor of Philosophy - Massey University (2012)
• Master of Arts - Groningen State University (1986)

Prizes and Awards

• 2017 Massey University Research Fund (MURF) Award of $12,000. 1.Terms of Engagement (Massey-Lead). This project seeks to ascertain the appropriateness and utility of academic / military engagement. Drawing on debates in Anthropology about the ethics of working with military forces, military sociological literature on civil-military relations, NGO and think tank guidelines on civil-military-police-NGO cooperation, and policy discussions on military roles, interagency and external engagements, this foundational project seeks to identify boundaries in and around academic engagement with militaries and vice versa. Outputs: -Working paper on issues raised in academic discourse about engagement. -Working paper on issues from military perspective. -Set of TOE for future projects between Massey researchers and NZDF. Likely contributors: Nina Harding (Anthropological debates on ethical issues and cultural view on organisations). B Greener and A Powles (civil-military relations, military sociology). Gerard Prinsen (Development Studies perspectives on harm). 2.Southern Katipo 2017 (NZDF Lead) Planning for next major military exercise in 2017. Academics to bring expertise to comment on / engage with military planners to note areas of concern, overlap, limitations, opportunities. Outputs: -Planning and execution of exercise itself. -Post exercise analysis by NZDF and academic team. -Publications on procedural and conceptual - Massey University (2017)

Research Interests

I am interested in using and building bridges between the work of practitioners and the work of researchers in three spheres:

Development programmes in practice

• Using participatory methods. (Click for an example of a slideshow of a class on pairwise ranking.)

• Quantifying the results of participatory methods. (Click for a slideshow of a class on quantifying the results of a series of pairwise rankings.) 

• Designing indicators. (See this paper for an analysis of the background and the technical, political and epistemological challenges in the use of indicators for development programmes.)

• Testing innovations in development management instruments. (See this paper about field experiences with the Theory-of-Change approach in planning development programmes in post-conflict contexts – contrasting it with the more predominating logical framework approach.)

Development policies and politics

• Local polities and small island states negotiating development sovereignty. (Click here for a paper on policy sovereignty in the Pacific.)

• Local communities or ethnic minorities defining development policies and priorities. (See this article I wrote as a practitioner in 2000 and which - to my great surprise - I found again as an academic when it was reprinted in books in 2003, 2006, and 2011.)

Teaching and researching development work

• Using extensive simulation games to teach postgraduate students about the practice of policy-making, implementation, and evaluation in development work. (See this paper about my experiences at Victoria University.)

• Researching the effects and effectiveness of the 'supervision experiences' of African doctoral students and their supervisors at Massey and Victoria Universities, with Victoria University colleagues and funded by AKO - the National Centre for Tertiary Teaching Excellence. (Click here for the project document.)

• Using texts - found in old filing cabinets as well as in cyber space - for research purposes. (Click for a book chapter on methodological considerations, especially around maintaining a text's 'contextual integrity'.)

• Whenever possible, I collaborate or align with individual postgraduate students to turn work that's already been created for educational purposes into products or services that may be useful for the wide community of researchers and practitioners. See this prezi by Gisela Purcell on work we did together.

My activities around indicators are relevant for both researchers as well as practitioners. This comes together practically in an interactive database of over 300 very diverse documents about indicators. This article outlines the background and purpose of the database and this one-minute video clip highlights its content. Please contact me for obtaining free access to this database.

Thematics

Resource Development and Management

Area of Expertise

Field of research codes
Human Geography (160400): International Relations (160607): Other Studies in Human Society (169900): Policy and Administration (160500): Political Science (160600): Studies In Human Society (160000)

Keywords

• Africa, local governance, health and education services. This is driven by my past and on-going professional engagement with international aid policies and aid work. If you are thinking of research in or about Africa; I will buy the first cup of coffee.

• Local polities and sovereignty. One of my personal discoveries in my research was the enduring resilience of local polities in Africa and I see a similar dynamic in the research on aid and sovereignty in the Pacific. 'Small is beautiful' needs an upgrade. If you want to research whether 'small is strong', please come and do some arm wrestling with me.

• Participatory research methods and development indicators. Here I am not just interested in the creative and interactive application of participatory research, but also in the challenges posed by upscaling participatory methods to feed into policy-making and research. If you want to quantify qualitative research, let's count some beans in my office.

Completed Projects

Consultancy

• Jan-Jul 2008 - Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs
  Teamleader for the Policy and Operations Evaluation Department, evaluating Dutch 'good governance' programmes in Africa between 1998-2007.
• Jun 2011 - Dec 2015 - Dutch Consortium for Rehabilitation (DCR)
  Adviser for the Knowledge Network of the DCR, supporting research designs and reviewing draft research reports.
• May 2011 - Dec 2015 - Research Trust of Victoria University
  Consultant for a Marsden-funded research into policy sovereignty in the Pacific to design and apply indicators, and to research international aid policies.
• Jan 2015 - Dec 2017 - University of Glasgow
  Associate Investigator in Project "Hazards Associated with Zoonotic pathogens in Emerging Livestock meat pathways" (HAZEL)

Languages

• Dutch
  Last used: this morning
  Spoken ability: Excellent
  Written ability: Excellent
• Portuguese
  Last used: last week
  Spoken ability: Excellent
  Written ability: Excellent
• French
  Last used: last month
  Spoken ability: Average
  Written ability: Needs work
• Spanish
  Last used: last year
  Spoken ability: Average
  Written ability: Needs work
• German
  Last used: a long time ago
  Spoken ability: Average
  Written ability: Needs work

Teaching Statement

• 131.702 Development Management - Internal

• 131.702 Development Management - Distance

My classes are quite often a mix of 'training in technical skills' followed by 'critical reflection on the application'. As an example, you may want to sit back and check out this audio-visual recording of a postgraduate class on the design and application of logframes as an important management tool in development practice (47'37").

Here's a thought I found worth sharing: “If the student is not better than the teacher, then the teacher is a failure.”  (Allen Ginsberg, quoting a Buddhist saying)

Courses Coordinated

• 131.702 Development Management
• 230.701 Evaluation: Theory and Principles

Current Doctoral Supervision

Main Supervisor of:

• Sueann Waite-Chung - Doctor of Philosophy
  An exploration into how “creole islandness” mediates policy actors’ engagement with each other, and their participation in the design and implementation of sustainable development policies/initiatives: A case study of Jamaica

Co-supervisor of:

• Heidi Van Der Watt - Doctor of Philosophy
  An alternative framework for valuing the socio-economic benefits of tourism: A case study of Gansbaai, South Africa

Completed Doctoral Supervision

Main Supervisor of:

• 2017 - Amaliah Fitriah - Doctor of Philosophy
  Decentralization, Identity Construction, and Conflict: Education under Aceh's Special Autonomy
• 2017 - Yuanheng Zheng - Doctor of Philosophy
  Political and Ethnic Representation in Chinese Local Governance - Analysis of the Roles of the Deputies of Leishan County People's Congress, Guizhou Province, China

Co-supervisor of:

• 2020 - Ackim Mwape - Doctor of Philosophy
  From international conventions to local park management plans: an analysis of the vertical integrity of Zambia’s national park system

Media

• 30 Nov 2010 - Video
  Civil Society, Development Policies and Indicators
  DevNet/NZAID Conference presentation
• 16 Oct 2012 - Radio
  Radio NZ Sunday Morning: A look at overseas aid
  As “former aid worker”, I have discussed aid policies with Jane Silloway Smith from the Maxim Institute (a conservative NZ think tank) and Geoff Bertram, economist at Victoria University.
• 11 Jul 2014 - Online
  NZ Aid & Africa: 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2… 1
  Development Policy Blog of the Australian National University (ANU)

Other Links

• Inter-Island Rivalry in the Pacific - Presentation at CNEP Conference in Nouméa (New Caledonia) in December 2015.
• Western volunteers fighting for IS. How is this time different? - Presentation at NZPSA Conference in Palmerston North (New Zealand) in December 2015.
• When cows go to town: Food safety and livestock in Tanzania - Presentation at NZPSA Conference in Palmerston North (New Zealand) in December 2015.
• Collaboration between international NGOs and national knowledge institutes (Uganda, South Sudan) - Presentation at Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs in The Hague (The Netherlands) in November 2015
• Purpose, relationship, and outputs in the collaboration between international NGOs and national universities - Presentation at DCR Conference in Amsterdam (The Netherlands) in November 2015
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• The ‘Islandian’ sovereignty of non-self-governing islands - Presentation at PIURN Conference in Nouméa/Koohnê (New Caledonia) in November 2014.
• Collaboration between International NGOs and African universities - Presentation at AFSAAP Conference in Dunedin (New Zealand) in November 2014.
• The complex nexus between development policy and sovereignty of autonomous island states: The case of New Caledonia - Presentation at PIPSA Conference in Tahiti (French Polynesia) in June 2014
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