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Andy Bevan BSc (Soc.Sci.), Bristol, Economic and Social History

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Andy Bevan in front of world map.

Lecturer

Institute of Education and Humanities

Tel: 01570 424712
Email: andy.bevan@uwtsd.ac.uk

Role in the University

  • Lecturing on BA International Development and Global Politics and on related programmes.
  • Co-organising (with Dr Alexander Scott) a week-long series of lectures, film and workshops in October 2017 to mark the 100th Anniversary of the Russian Revolution
  • Curating an exhibition at UWTSD Lampeter Library (September-December 2017) of Dmitri Moor posters and, with support from the National Library of Wales, an exhibition of archived front pages from the Cambria Daily Leader, featuring news from Russia in 1917
  • Joint research, since November 2020, with Vincentian historian, Dr Adrian Fraser, into modern-day legacies of the Camden Park slave plantation in St Vincent (which was purchased in 1821 by Thomas Phillips, a major benefactor of St David’s College, Lampeter) – a research project which is also being filmed by Vincentian film-maker, Akley Olton.
  • Joint presentation, with Dr Alexander Scott, entitled Thomas Phillips Must Fall, at a 2-day conference, Wales and the World: Cynefin, Colonialism and Global Connections, in Lampeter, 6-7 June 2022 (see Publications below).

Background

Notions of progress and development first struck me in my teens when I spent a year, away from Dynevor School, Swansea,  in what was then British Honduras. My dad was on secondment with Barbara Castle’s new Ministry of Overseas Development – and I studied at the Jesuit-run St John’s College in Belize City.

Chairman of the Young Socialists in the 1970s and Labour’s National Youth Officer in the 1980s, I was elected Labour HQ staff convener 1983-1988, dealing directly with the major players on Labour’s NEC in those turbulent years.

In 1988, I joined VSO’s staff, supporting technical development interventions, mainly in Africa, recruiting skilled personnel and designing their pre-departure adaptation training, in close collaboration with the Intermediate Technology Development Group (set up by E F Schumacher) and the Water, Engineering and Development Centre at Loughborough University. I regularly taught courses including Appropriate Technology, Adapting Technical Work Practice and Personal  Safety and Security for Development Workers. I remained a trainer for VSO until 2004. While at VSO, I had the opportunity for field research in Kenya on rural water supply, informal sector economy and community-based building, and on technical/vocational education provision in Kenya and Uganda, Zimbabwe, Ghana and Namibia.

From 2000-2014, I co-managed European Voluntary Service projects in and from Wales and in 2015 I joined the UWTSD staff as Senior Project Officer on the EU-funded Rural Alliances project.

Academic Interests

Level 4 modules

  • Sustainable Development in an era of Globalisation (2016-2020)
  • Working in Development: Practical Preparation (2017-2019)
  • Humanitarian Intervention (2017-2019)
  • Power and Inequality (2021/2022)   

Contributions to

  • Morality, Ethics and Reason (2021/2022)
  • The Colonial Project and the Humanities (2021/22, 2022/23)
  • Cultures and Philosophies of Politics (2022/23)

Level 5/6 modules

  • Post-Colonial States and Civil Society
  • Activism, Protest and Campaigning for Global Justice
  • Population Growth, Urbanisation and Sustainability
  • International Political Economy
  • Current Issues in Comparative Politics
  • China in the World
  • Economic Anthropology and Past Societies (2022/23)

Level 7 module

In 2018, I was Visiting Tutor at Swansea University on Human Rights, Humanitarian Intervention and Global Justice on the MA International Development and Human Rights programme.

Research Interests

  • Transitions from subsistence to cash economies
  • Role of the informal sector in economic development
  • The UP Government in Chile 1970-73
  • International comparisons in Citizen Service programmes
  • The Revolutionary Atlantic in the 17th -early 19th century
  • Case studies in Uneven and Combined Development

Expertise

  • Theory and practice in “appropriate technologies”
  • Rural water supply and the use of locally available skills and materials
  • Community involvement in technical change
  • Labour Party and trade union history of the 1970s and 1980s
  • Contemporary Welsh politics

Publications

  • Culture, Cash and Housing – Community and Tradition in Low-income Building (1992). Mitchell, M and Bevan, A: VSO/IT Books, London
  • A Real Citizen Service for Wales (2014). Bevan, A: Institute of Welsh Affairs/Welsh Assembly Commission, Cardiff 
    Download available from the Institute of Welsh Affairs (IWA)

YouTube videos

Institute of Welsh Affairs weblogs