Institute of Development Studies

Biography

Dr Evangelia Berdou is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies in the Vulnerability and Poverty Reduction team, working at the interface of information communication technologies and development. After obtaining a PhD in Media and Communications from the London School of Economics and Political Science she spent a year as a postdoctoral fellow at SPRU - Science Technology Policy Research at the University of Sussex, where she developed her expertise in policy, innovation and governance. Her interest in problem-solving research has led her to read widely in sociology, theories of technological innovation, organisational learning and development.

Her work focuses on the advantages and limitations of distributed forms of problem-solving and coordination for individual and collective action benefitting human development and crisis response, methodological innovations involving the use of new sources of information, and the implications of ICTs for the lives and livelihoods of the poor. Her latest work seeks to develop vocabularies and practices to bridge the divides between the research, development and technology practitioner communities. She has received grants from the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Department for International Development (DFID). Her work has been published in the form of books, peer-reviewed conference papers and reports.

Selected Projects and Recent Work

• Mediating Voices, Communicating Realities
• IKM Emergent

Thematic Expertise

ICTs; Livelihoods; Participation; Poverty.

Selected Publications »»

• Berdou, E. (2011) 'Learning about New Technologies and the Changing Evidence Base for Social Science Research and Decision Making in International Development', IDS Practice Paper In Brief 4, Brighton: IDS
• Berdou, E. (2011) 'Mediating Voices, Communicating Realities: Using Information Crowdsourcing Tools, Open Data Initiatives and Digital Media to Support and Protect the Vulnerable'
• Berdou, E. (2011) Organization in Open Source Communities: at the Crossroads of the Gift and Market Economies, Oxford: Routledge
• Berdou, E. (2010) 'In the Cocoon: Translating Complexity Across Communities and Networks of Practice in a Collaborative Open Source Project' , London: London School of Economics and Political Science
• Berdou, E. and Mansell, R. (2010) 'Political economy, the internet and free/open source software development' in Allen, M., Hunsinger, J. and Klastrup, L. (eds), International Handbook for Internet Research, London; New York: Springer
• Berdou, E. (2007) 'Learning and the imperative of production in free/open source development', IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 234.Open Source Development Adoption and Innovation Proceedings:235-240, Boston: Springer
• Berdou, E. (2006) 'Insiders and Outsiders: paid contributors and the dynamics of cooperation in mature, community led F/OS projects', Foundation on Open Source Software Proceedings :201-208, Como: Springer
• Berdou, E. and Dini, P. (2005) 'Report on the socio-economics of Free/Open Source: Working together at the intersections between the gift economy and the exchange economy: Sustainability and Scalability in F/OS' D18.3, London: London School of Economics and Political Science