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Human Development &
Capability Association

Agency, Well-Being and Justice

Prof. Des Gasper

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  • Position: Senior
  • Department: Governance, Law and Social Justice
  • Affiliation: International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam
  • Country: Netherlands
  • Website: http://www.iss.nl
  • Biographical info: Des Gasper is Professor of Human Development, Development Ethics and Public Policy at ISS Rotterdam. He works on various topics including human development, development ethics, public policy analysis and migration. Within Human Development he studies the link to human rights and human security both in theoretical and ‘applied’ research. Recently, he has written conceptual chapters for the Routledge Handbook of Human Security and the Elgar Handbook on Climate Change and Human Security (2013). With Oscar Gomez he furthermore co-wrote articles on human security for the UNDP, Contemporary Politics, and the Journal of Development Studies.

Research interests:
Development ethics; human security; interpretive policy analysis; climate change; SDGs.

Thematic Groups:
Ethics and Development Foundational Issues in the Capability Approach Human Rights Human Security Sustainable Human Development

Regional Network:
European Network

About Des Gasper

Des Gasper is professor emeritus (Human Development, Development Ethics, and Public Policy) at the International Institute of Social Studies (The Hague), in Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands. He has been based there since 1989, after studies in the UK and several years working in Botswana and Zimbabwe. He has been a member and Fellow of HDCA since it began in the early 2000s, and worked on the capability approach and theories of well-being. Since the 2004 HDCA conference he has especially worked with colleagues to follow-up the human security thinking of Mahbub ul Haq (initiator of the Human Development Reports), for extending and deepening human development analysis and practice. Some resulting publications are: (1) 2005: Securing Humanity – Situating ‘Human Security’ as Concept and Discourse. J. of Human Development, 6(2). (2) 2011: Transnational Migration and Human Security. Co-editor T-D. Truong. Springer: http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-642-12757-1. (3) 2013: Good Practices in Addressing Human Security through National Human Development Reports. Co-authors: O.A. Gomez, Y. Mine. UNDP HDRO Occasional Paper. http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/good_practices.pdf. (4) 2014: Migration, Gender and Social Justice: Perspectives on human insecurity, co-editor. Springer. Open-access: http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-642-28012-2. (5) 2015: Human Security Thinking in Practice - ’Personal Security’, ‘Citizen Security’ and Comprehensive Mappings. Contemporary Politics, 21(1), co-author O.A. Gomez. (6) 2016: Investigating Migration within a Human Security Framework; co-author G. Sinatti. Revista Migración y Desarrollo / Migration and Development, 14(27), both Spanish and English. https://www.academia.edu/29343441/Investigating_Migration_within_a_Human_Security_Framework . (7) 2020: Human Security. Ch. 29 in Cambridge Handbook of the Capability Approach, eds. E. Chiappero-Martinetti, S. Osmani, M. Qizilbash. Cambridge University Press Online ISBN: 9781316335741.

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