• Financial Patterns and International Architectures: Grand corruption, Nigeria and the Role of the West

    There is a growing recognition that the enablers of large-scale (‘grand’) corruption lie in transnational financial networks. Literature suggests that a large proportion of illicit flows from Nigeria are invested in the UK. But illicit flows are, by their nature, illegal and deliberately hidden from view, making them a particularly challenging object of research. By presenting the findings of three Global Integrity Anti-Corruption Evidence (GI-ACE) projects that analyse UK-Nigeria business connections from different perspectives, this discussion will examine and problematise the international financial architecture that allows for proceeds of grand corruption looted from Nigeria to be laundered in the UK. It will furthermore discuss the role of Western professional service providers in facilitating kleptocratic practices.

    Event time: March 24, 2021 15:00 GMT

    Register for the event here: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJArcu2hpjgsEt0ATyUc8pqtZrsb2JW-w6yK

  • What’s in a Design?: Mainstreaming Gender in Anti Corruption research

    As part of FCDO’s Anti-Corruption Evidence Programme, SOAS and Global Integrity researchers will discuss why and how gender matters to our corruption research, both in terms of agency (how we focus on empowering actors) and impact (taking gender into consideration for public service delivery).

    Our research teams will present challenges and opportunities they have faced in incorporating gender in research design, and explore why many researchers still stray away from working with “gender” when designing research. Does this difficulty stem from the fact that sectoral specificities with complex power imbalances make it difficult to focus on gendered dynamics and solutions? Or is that, despite the discussions and guidelines on gender mainstreaming, we still don’t have a shared understanding of the value of gender? Most important, are there things we are not studying that we might if we had a gender angle.

    Event time: March 23, 2021 10:00 EST

    Register for the event here: https://gint.info/GenderedDesigns