About
Gijs van Selm is a PhD researcher based at the Department of International Development. From a political sociology perspective, his research focuses on the social ordering of humanitarian action and the localisation of humanitarian governance in northwestern Syria during the Syrian Civil War. He has published work in World Development, Development in Practice, and Researching Internal Displacement.
He has presented his work at conferences organised by the Development Studies Association (DSA), the European Association for Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), the International Society for Third-Sector Research (ISTR), and the International Humanitarian Studies Association (IHSA). Professor Stuart Gordon and Professor David Lewis supervise his research.
Before his PhD research, he was awarded an MSc and an MRes in International Development from the University of Manchester and the LSE, respectively. He has worked as a Research Assistant at Radboud University’s Department of Cultural Anthropology and Development Studies, at UCL’s Development Engagement Lab, for the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of IDPs, and completed various consultancies with NGOs and NGO networks.
Since 2022 he has been a member of the Academics Researching Power Imbalances (ARPI), investigating power inequalities between development NGOs. This programme is a collaboration between researchers from The University of Manchester, Wageningen University, Radboud University, Makerere University, the University of Ghana, and the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Expertise
Power Inequalities; Locally-led Aid; NGOs; Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus