Organisation:
The Centre of Civil Society and the Institute of Social Studies (ISS)
Website:
Personal profile
Alan Fowler (UK) is a professor at the Centre of Civil Society of the University of KwaZula Natal, South Africa, and professor of ´civil society´ at the the Institute of Social Studies (ISS), the Hague, the Netherlands. He has been active for over 25 years in international development as an organizational adviser, as well as writing about, publishing and researching the aid system with a special focus on civil society. His wide institutional experience has included roles as a Ford Foundation programme officer and World Bank Visiting Fellow. Current analysis, consultancy and advisory work concentrates on policy and strategy as well as long-term facilitation of organizational change processes in NGOs. Recent research has including studying how and why people who are poor in southern Africa provide assistance to each other. In 1994 Fowler completed a DPhil at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK. Since the mid-seventies he has worked and lived in Africa and Asia and now resides in South Africa. He has written many books, including Striking a balance: A Guide to Enhancing the Effectiveness of Non-Governmental Organizations in International Development and The Virtuous Spiral: A Guide to Sustainability for NGOs in International Development. He published ´Connecting the dots: Complexity thinking and social development´ in The Broker 7, 2008.
