Events during lockdown: More than 1,900 sign-ups

Written by Gunn Benjaminsen

July 22, 2020

LIDC temporarily closed the doors to its offices on 20 Bloomsbury Square in mid-March this year. Overnight, all aspects of our operations had to move online and be carried out remotely – including our events.

New format, global reach

Switching to Zoom and Collaborate Ultra has allowed us to have a truly global reach: We’ve had speakers joining us from their bases in Australia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Netherlands. Others have joined as participants from Colombia, Kenya, India and many other countries. In total, more than 1,900 people signed up for LIDC events between April and September. Recordings of our events are available on LIDC’s YouTube channel.

BLM event most popular

All of our online events have been well-attended, not least because of the high-calibre speakers that have agreed to speak. The most popular event so far has been ‘How Much do Black Lives Matter in Global Development?’ on 3 July. A total of 413 people signed up to hear Dr Althea Maria Rivas (SOAS), Dr Robtel Neajai Pailey (University of Oxford) and Dr Kalpana Wilson (Birkbeck) discuss the extent and impact of racism in international development.

We will continue to organise our events virtually for the foreseeable future. These will be advertised on our Twitter account LIDC_UK and on our website. We are also pleased to share events recordings with our readers: