L Camfield
Biographic Data
| ID | 20050 |
|---|---|
| NAME | L Camfield |
| GIVEN NAMES | L |
| FAMILY NAME | Camfield |
| SIGNATURE | CAMFIELD L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of East Anglia |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0165-9857 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 46 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 398 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 46 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Gendered dimensions of commercial agriculture and subjective wellbeing in rural Nepal
Agricultural commercialisation is often portrayed as a way to improve the lives of rural people in low-income countries. However, its impacts are evaluated through agronomic yields and economic returns, with little attention paid to how it shapes people’s subjective wellbeing. This article addresses that omission by examining the relationship between cash-crop production and life satisfaction using gendered linear regression analysis of data from…
Social Science Fiction and Development Studies: Expanding the Imaginative and Methodological Horizon
This survey paper examines the potential of social science fiction (SSF), an approach combining social science analysis with narrative and imaginative techniques of science fiction to explore the human consequences of global income inequalities. Although the social sciences’ influence on science fiction is well documented, the reverse, namely the methodological potential of science fiction in the social sciences, remains underexplored, partly due…
Development as (In)Justice: The Case of Namibia
This article critically examines the ongoing legacy of colonial land dispossession and its impacts on marginalized communities to reveal the limitations to achieving restorative justice. We focus on the unequal (re)distribution of land, the German Namibian reconciliation agreement and the threats posed by a planned German Namibian mega-project to produce green hydrogen, to advocate for development that delivers material benefits to marginalized g…
What Challenges for Global Development Research are Posed by a More Decolonial Approach? Colonial Genealogies and Responses
The increasing appetite for decolonial approaches in development research challenges conventional methodologies rooted in colonial legacies. While the relationship between colonialism and development is well documented, the colonial underpinnings of key research methods, such as surveys and big data, have received less attention. This paper critically examines how these methods, as tools of colonial governance, continue to predominate in developm…
Don’t Look Up! Individual Income Comparisons and Subjective Well-Being of Students in Thailand
Empirical evidence supports the hypothesis that an individual’s position in an income stratum—more than the absolute income level—determines subjective well-being. However, studies on subjective well-being suffer from a critical methodological weakness: they use exogenously defined reference groups. Our study addresses this point by applying an innovative new survey instrument. We ask respondents to identify individual reference persons for incom…
Reconciling well-being and resilience for sustainable development
No One Left Behind: Using Mixed-Methods Research to Identify and Learn from Socially Marginalised Adolescents in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
This article describes the mixed-methods approach used by the Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence (GAGE) research programme. It discusses how qualitative and quantitative methods can be used both in isolation and combined to learn about the lives of adolescents in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), focusing on the methodological and ethical approaches used to reach socially marginalised adolescents (including adolescents with disabilit…
Intersectionality as a Framework for Understanding Adolescent Vulnerabilities in Low and Middle Income Countries: Expanding Our Commitment to Leave No One Behind
Given increasing policy attention to the consequences of youth marginalisation for development processes, engaging with the experiences of socially marginalised adolescents in low- and middle-income countries (including those who are out of school, refugees, married, with disabilities or adolescent parents) is a pressing priority. To understand how these disadvantages—and adolescents’ abilities to respond to them—intersect to shape opportunities …
Don’t you want us to eat?’: The moral economy of a Ugandan marketplace
Marketplaces have long provided a context for witnessing how economic realities get ‘done’ amid broader processes of social and economic transformation. A growing scholarship debates the relationship between markets and capitalist modes of production in Africa, however, less attention has been paid to the moral dimensions of economic life within popular urban marketplaces. This article examines the moral economy of a central marketplace in Kampal…
People Who Once Had 40 Cattle Are Left Only with Fences: Coping with Persistent Drought in Awash, Ethiopia
How to support those responding to environmental change in resource-constrained environments is central to literature on climate change adaption. Our research explores a gap in this literature relating to the negotiation of intra-household relations and resource access across different types of household in contexts of social and environmental transition. Using the example of the semi-arid Awash region in North-Eastern Ethiopia, which has experie…
Managing risk, changing aspirations and household dynamics: Implications for wellbeing and adaptation in semi-arid Africa and India
Semi-arid regions across Africa and Asia are characterized by rapidly changing biophysical regimes, structural vulnerabilities, and increasing livelihood precarity. Gender, class, and caste/ethnic identities and relationships, and the specific social, economic and political power, roles and responsibilities they entail, shape the choices and decisions open to individuals and households in managing the risks they face. Unpacking the multiple, inte…
Can agricultural intensification help attain Sustainable Development Goals? Evidence from Africa and Asia
Market-oriented agricultural intensification is a major development strategy, yet its alignment with sustainable development goals (SDGs) is unclear. We apply indicators for SDG 2 (eradicate hunger) regarding income, food production, food security and land tenure to recent intensifications in Rwanda and Laos to reveal their disaggregated impacts. We find while market-oriented intensification may generate poverty reduction, it also exacerbated mar…
Business as family, family as business: Female entrepreneurship in Kampala, Uganda
Rigor and Ethics in the World of Big-team Qualitative Data: Experiences From Research in International Development
In the large international projects where many qualitative researchers work, generating qualitative Big Data, data sharing represents the status quo. This is rarely acknowledged, even though the ethical implications are considerable and span both process and product. I argue that big-team qualitative researchers can strengthen claims to rigor in analysis (the product) by drawing on a growing body of knowledge about how to do credible secondary an…
‘Character matters': How do measures of non-cognitive skills shape understandings of social mobility in the global North and South
This paper highlights growing interest in measures of non‐cognitive skills that are shaping debate on poverty and social mobility in the global North and South. I use examples from an entrepreneurship programme in South Africa and the ‘Character and Resilience manifesto' in the UK to argue that non‐cognitive skills are being incorporated in a narrative of the shortcomings of ‘the poor'. The characteristics of the poor, or their ‘non‐cognitive ski…
Impact Evaluation – Are We ‘Off the Gold Standard’
A Cross-Country Analysis of Perceived Economic Status and Life Satisfaction in High- and Low-Income Countries
Things you Wanted to Know about Bias in Evaluations but Never Dared to Think
The thrust for evidence?based policymaking has paid little attention to problems of bias. Statistical evidence is more fragile than generally understood, and false positives are all too likely given the incentives of policymakers and academic and professional evaluators. Well?known cognitive biases make bias likely for not dissimilar reasons in qualitative and mixed methods evaluations. What we term delinquent organisational isomorphism promotes …
Three ‘Rs’ of Econometrics: Repetition, Reproduction and Replication
Development economics has become increasingly quantified in recent years, reflecting the aspirations of economists to practise hard science. We argue that standard applied econometric methodology lacks one key feature of the claim of science to be scientific, namely replication as part of independent confirmation of findings. Replication plays a large role in understanding the confidence we can place in the quantitative studies on which much poli…
Improving the quality of development research: What could archiving qualitative data for reanalysis and revisiting research sites contribute
As the emphasis on evidence-based policymaking in international development increases, so too should the attention paid to the quality of the research on which this evidence is based. One way to encourage this is by archiving research data to enable reanalysis, but this requirement is often ignored or resisted by development researchers. Similarly, ambivalent feelings are expressed about revisits to former research sites to conduct further resear…
Growing Up in Ethiopia and Andhra Pradesh: The Impact of Social Protection Schemes on Girls’ Roles and Responsibilities
Household Trajectories in Rural Ethiopia: What Can a Mixed Method Approach Tell Us About the Impact of Poverty on Children
Universal and Local Reconciled: Exploring Satisfaction with Universal and Local Goals in Thailand and Bangladesh
Cultures of Aspiration and Poverty? Aspirational Inequalities in Northeast and Southern Thailand
Basic Needs and Wealth as Independent Determinants of Happiness: An Illustration from Thailand
How Can Children Tell Us About Their Wellbeing? Exploring the Potential of Participatory Research Approaches within Young Lives
Wellbeing Research in Developing Countries: Reviewing the Role of Qualitative Methods
On Subjective Well-being and Quality of Life
We integrate the multi-disciplinary fields of quality of life (QoL) and well-being (WB) and appraise the impacts of health factors. Theoretical and methodological limitations are discussed and new conceptual and technical advances identified, These are informed by cross-cultural and community perspectives. Following a definitional review, social inequalities, and links with happiness are examined. Demographic, experiential and personal factors ar…
Managing risk, changing aspirations and household dynamics: Implications for wellbeing and adaptation in semi-arid Africa and India
Semi-arid regions across Africa and Asia are characterized by rapidly changing biophysical regimes, structural vulnerabilities, and increasing livelihood precarity. Gender, class, and caste/ethnic identities and relationships, and the specific social, economic and political power, roles and responsibilities they entail, shape the choices and decisions open to individuals and households in managing the risks they face. Unpacking the multiple, inte…
What's the Use of 'Well-Being' in Contexts of Child Poverty? Approaches to Research, Monitoring and Children's Participation
Monitoring, protecting and promoting 'well-being' are central to realisation of children's rights. Yet definitions of the concept are both variable and can appear conceptually confused. Competing research paradigms engage with the concept and its measurement, while applications of well-being in policy are equally contested. This paper outlines some of the major debates, as a starting point for reviewing three contrasting approaches to well-being:…
Autonomy or Dependence - or Both: Perspectives from Bangladesh
Exploring the Quality of Life of People in North Eastern and Southern Thailand
Validation of the WeDQoL-Goals-Thailand Measure: Culture-Specific Individualised Quality of Life
Reconciling well-being and resilience for sustainable development
Business as family, family as business: Female entrepreneurship in Kampala, Uganda
Household Trajectories in Rural Ethiopia: What Can a Mixed Method Approach Tell Us About the Impact of Poverty on Children
Basic Needs and Wealth as Independent Determinants of Happiness: An Illustration from Thailand
Cultures of Aspiration and Poverty? Aspirational Inequalities in Northeast and Southern Thailand
Children's Well-being in Developing Countries: A Conceptual and Methodological Review
Using Qualitative Methods With Poor Children In Urban Ethiopia: Opportunities & Challenges
Impact Evaluation – Are We ‘Off the Gold Standard’
Resilience and Well-being Among Urban Ethiopian Children: What Role Do Social Resources and Competencies Play
From School to Adulthood’? Young People's Pathways Through Schooling in Urban Ethiopia
Intersectionality as a Framework for Understanding Adolescent Vulnerabilities in Low and Middle Income Countries: Expanding Our Commitment to Leave No One Behind
Given increasing policy attention to the consequences of youth marginalisation for development processes, engaging with the experiences of socially marginalised adolescents in low- and middle-income countries (including those who are out of school, refugees, married, with disabilities or adolescent parents) is a pressing priority. To understand how these disadvantages—and adolescents’ abilities to respond to them—intersect to shape opportunities …
No One Left Behind: Using Mixed-Methods Research to Identify and Learn from Socially Marginalised Adolescents in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
This article describes the mixed-methods approach used by the Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence (GAGE) research programme. It discusses how qualitative and quantitative methods can be used both in isolation and combined to learn about the lives of adolescents in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), focusing on the methodological and ethical approaches used to reach socially marginalised adolescents (including adolescents with disabilit…
Don’t you want us to eat?’: The moral economy of a Ugandan marketplace
Marketplaces have long provided a context for witnessing how economic realities get ‘done’ amid broader processes of social and economic transformation. A growing scholarship debates the relationship between markets and capitalist modes of production in Africa, however, less attention has been paid to the moral dimensions of economic life within popular urban marketplaces. This article examines the moral economy of a central marketplace in Kampal…
Community understandings of childhood transitions in Ethiopia: Different for girls
The paper explores the perspectives of caregivers and other adults on the nature and timing of childhood transitions, elicited through group discussions in five Ethiopian communities, as reflective of the community norms that shape childhood transitions. The paper uses data from Young Lives, a longitudinal study of children growing up in poverty, to investigate the transitions made by girls from childhood to the onset of puberty. It argues that t…
Young lives in transition: From school to adulthood
Wants, Needs and Satisfaction: A Comparative Study in Thailand and Bangladesh
Even If She Learns, She Doesn’t Understand Properly”. Children’s Understandings of Illbeing and Poverty in Five Ethiopian Communities
Autonomy or Dependence - or Both: Perspectives from Bangladesh
Exploring the Quality of Life of People in North Eastern and Southern Thailand
Translation is not enough’: Using the Global Person Generated Index (GPGI) to assess individual quality of life in Bangladesh, Thailand, and Ethiopia
Wellbeing Research in Developing Countries: Reviewing the Role of Qualitative Methods
On Subjective Well-being and Quality of Life
We integrate the multi-disciplinary fields of quality of life (QoL) and well-being (WB) and appraise the impacts of health factors. Theoretical and methodological limitations are discussed and new conceptual and technical advances identified, These are informed by cross-cultural and community perspectives. Following a definitional review, social inequalities, and links with happiness are examined. Demographic, experiential and personal factors ar…
What's the Use of 'Well-Being' in Contexts of Child Poverty? Approaches to Research, Monitoring and Children's Participation
Monitoring, protecting and promoting 'well-being' are central to realisation of children's rights. Yet definitions of the concept are both variable and can appear conceptually confused. Competing research paradigms engage with the concept and its measurement, while applications of well-being in policy are equally contested. This paper outlines some of the major debates, as a starting point for reviewing three contrasting approaches to well-being:…
Even If She Learns, She Doesn’t Understand Properly”. Children’s Understandings of Illbeing and Poverty in Five Ethiopian Communities
Validation of the WeDQoL-Goals-Thailand Measure: Culture-Specific Individualised Quality of Life
Using Qualitative Methods With Poor Children In Urban Ethiopia: Opportunities & Challenges
How Can Children Tell Us About Their Wellbeing? Exploring the Potential of Participatory Research Approaches within Young Lives
Stew Without Bread or Bread Without Stew’: Children’s Understandings of Poverty in Ethiopia
This paper explores children’s understandings of poverty, ill‐being and well‐being in Ethiopia using data collected through group exercises with children aged 5–6 and 11–13 participating in Young Lives, an international study of childhood poverty. In some respects the characteristics of poverty reported by children resemble those reported by adults participating in similar exercises. However, the children’s addition of appearance and clothing, an…
Researching Children's Understandings of Poverty and Risk in Diverse Contexts
Throughout the world, children experience and manage risk as a part of their everyday lives. But growing up poor may be a particular source of vulnerability and disadvantage for children, especially where they are confronted with gross inequalities. The global challenge is huge. By 2015, it is estimated that nearly one third of the world’s population will be under the age of fourteen. At the same time, children are disproportionately represented …
Children's Well-being in Developing Countries: A Conceptual and Methodological Review
Outcomes of Orphanhood in Ethiopia: A Mixed Methods Study
Wants, Needs and Satisfaction: A Comparative Study in Thailand and Bangladesh
Community understandings of childhood transitions in Ethiopia: Different for girls
The paper explores the perspectives of caregivers and other adults on the nature and timing of childhood transitions, elicited through group discussions in five Ethiopian communities, as reflective of the community norms that shape childhood transitions. The paper uses data from Young Lives, a longitudinal study of children growing up in poverty, to investigate the transitions made by girls from childhood to the onset of puberty. It argues that t…
Young lives in transition: From school to adulthood
From School to Adulthood’? Young People's Pathways Through Schooling in Urban Ethiopia
A girl never finishes her journey’: Mixing methods to understand female experiences of education in contemporary Ethiopia
Much research has suggested that focusing on the determinants of female enrolment and dropout tells us little about girls’ experiences of schooling in developing countries and cannot explain variation in their educational trajectories. This paper draws on quantitative (n = 1177) and qualitative data (n = 15) collected by Young Lives in Ethiopia to explore the educational experiences of girls aged 11–15 living in five rural and urban communities. …
Improving the quality of development assistance: What role for qualitative methods in randomized experiments
While randomized experiments can be valuable tools in evaluating aid effectiveness, research designs limit the role of qualitative methods to ‘field visits’ or description of contexts. This article suggests expanding the role of qualitative methods and highlights their advantages and limitations relative to survey methods. It reviews a range of qualitative methods and suggests that life histories are compatible with the internal and external vali…
Resilience and Well-being Among Urban Ethiopian Children: What Role Do Social Resources and Competencies Play
Three ‘Rs’ of Econometrics: Repetition, Reproduction and Replication
Development economics has become increasingly quantified in recent years, reflecting the aspirations of economists to practise hard science. We argue that standard applied econometric methodology lacks one key feature of the claim of science to be scientific, namely replication as part of independent confirmation of findings. Replication plays a large role in understanding the confidence we can place in the quantitative studies on which much poli…
Improving the quality of development research: What could archiving qualitative data for reanalysis and revisiting research sites contribute
As the emphasis on evidence-based policymaking in international development increases, so too should the attention paid to the quality of the research on which this evidence is based. One way to encourage this is by archiving research data to enable reanalysis, but this requirement is often ignored or resisted by development researchers. Similarly, ambivalent feelings are expressed about revisits to former research sites to conduct further resear…
Growing Up in Ethiopia and Andhra Pradesh: The Impact of Social Protection Schemes on Girls’ Roles and Responsibilities
Household Trajectories in Rural Ethiopia: What Can a Mixed Method Approach Tell Us About the Impact of Poverty on Children
Sociology (32 works) · Political science (28 works) · Psychology (28 works) · Economics (25 works) · Economic growth (23 works) · Social science (23 works) · Poverty (18 works) · Poverty, Education, and Child Welfare (17 works) · Geography (13 works) · Medicine (13 works)