GDI Celebrates the Award of Four New Professorships

The Global Development Institute is delighted that four academic colleagues have been promoted to professor, namely Tom Lavers, David Lawson, Osman Ouattara, and Antonio Savoia. This reflects their strong and diverse contributions to Development Studies and the excellent support that they’ve received from many colleagues at GDI and beyond throughout their careers.

Tom has a background in comparative political economy, state-society relations, and the politics of social policy, land, energy, and infrastructure. With a particular interest in Ethiopia, Tom’s major publications include Ethiopia’s ‘Developmental State’: Political Order and Distributive Crisis (2023) and Dams, Power, and the Politics of Ethiopia's Renaissance (2024). He also led two research projects exploring the politics of social protection as part of the Effective States and Inclusive Development research centre (ESID), culminating in the publication of an edited collection, The Politics of Distributing Social Transfers (2022). He is now extending his research interests to the politics of green energy transitions in Latin America as well as Africa.

David has led GDI’s MSc in Public Policy and Management with distinction for many years and is currently GDI’s Director of Postgraduate Teaching and Learning. His research primarily focuses on poverty dynamics, gender, and social protection, having accrued significant experience in advisory and policy-oriented roles for institutions including the World Health Organization, the OECD, and UNICEF, as well as economic advisory roles for the governments of Ethiopia, Lesotho, and Uganda. In 2024, David published Cash Transfers for Poverty Reduction: An International Operational Guide with Francisco V. Ayala, an operational guide for key stakeholders, officials and students to understand the design, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation of cash transfer programmes.

Osman is also a development economist, with expertise in the macroeconomic effects of natural disasters and climate change. He is also interested in international finance, foreign aid, poverty and inequality, and growth and productivity. Some of Osman’s recent publications include a piece for Cities journal exploring how climate variability affects labour productivity across Accra and an article in the Review of Development Economics about climate threat and price stability in Belize. Osman also serves as Director of The Rory and Elizabeth Brooks Doctoral College, supporting the institute’s substantial number of PGRs through their doctoral programmes, and undertakes advisory work with central banks in Latin America and West Africa.

Like Osman, Antonio’s expertise lies in Development Economics, with a focus on the economics of institutions and governance, the economics of inequality, and the political economy of development. Antonio has worked closely with UNU-WIDER, producing research about how developing economies can build tax systems capable of raising revenues from broad tax bases. Some of his recent co-authored working papers for UNU-WIDER include ‘Curse or Blessing? The Impact of Inequality on Financial development’ and ‘Factor income taxation and the governance dividend’. Antonio is also Managing Co-Editor of the Journal of Development Studies, a multi-disciplinary journal committed to fostering rigorous theoretical debate in the field of global development. He has strong links with the OECD’s influential tax policy team and regularly advises them on their work.

As well as this new crop of professors, Gianluca Iazzolino has been promoted to the role of Senior Lecturer. Affiliated with the institute’s Centre for Digital Development (CDD), Gianluca is especially interested in the intersections between development and digital geography, with recent work focusing on the algorithmic precaritisation of migrant delivery workers and the AI for Social Good (AI4SG) movement, which aims to use artificial intelligence to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Gianluca also leads GDI’s partnership with the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Nairobi.

Professor Sam Hickey, GDI’s current head of institute, said: