Matt Baillie Smith
Professor
Matt is an interdisciplinary global development academic, with particular interests in the relationships between civil society, citizenship and development in the global South. His current work focuses on volunteering in humanitarian and development settings, and on young people as development actors. He is Principal Investigator of Refugee Youth Volunteering Uganda (www.ryvu.org), an ESRC/GCRF funded project exploring volunteering by young displaced people in Uganda and its impacts on their skills and employability and experiences of inequality. He is also PI of a BA/GCRF project exploring youth agency for Sustainable Development in Palestine, and a Co-Investigator and Work Package Lead for UKRI/GCRF Living Deltas (www.livingdeltas.org), an interdisciplinary research hub working to support more sustainable futures for deltas in South and South East Asia. Matt is also Research Director of the Swedish Red Cross Led Volunteers in Conflicts and Emergencies Initiative (www.rcrcvice.org), a research, innovation and learning project to support the safer and more effective engagement of volunteers in crises.
Matt previously worked for a development NGO and he continues to work in partnership with a range of national and global development organisations. This work includes co-designing and delivering research projects, acting as a critical friend to organisations and work to help build research and data collection and analysis capacity within development organisations and the groups they engage with. At Northumbria, Matt is co-director of the Northumbria Centre for International Development.
