Alastair Smith

Alastair Smith's details

Mr Alastair Michael Smith

BRASS University of Cardiff

United Kingdom

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 This is the User's interest, expertise and short biography:
Alastair graduated from the University of York in 2004 with a first class honours degree in History and Politics. After a six month period working in the north of England in a mixture of market research and financial management, Alastair travelled to Latin America to apply his experience in the context to micro-business development projects. Among the projects with which he had contact, Alastair spent time with an indigenous jam making project in Quetzatenango in the highlands of Guatemala, and an agro-tourism project in the Sacred Valley, Peru. Specifically, he was involved in consulting local groups on market research and marketing strategies (as well as designing and building the occasional information board).

Returning to the UK in the autumn of 2005, Alastair studied at Queen Elizabeth House, Centre for Development Studies at the University of Oxford, under the ESRC 2+2 studentship program. This course provided an interdisciplinary perspective (Alastair took foundation courses in Anthropology and Economics to compliment his undergraduate train in History and Politics) on a broad range of issues that face the developing world. As part of the course Alastair also completed ESRC accredited methods training.

It was this broad approach that Alastair applied to his dissertation that covered the subject of Fair Trade and its relationship to process of sustainable development. Specifically, the work addressed the applicability of Fairtrade certification to the value chain of garment production. In 2007 Alastair graduated with an MPhil in Development Studies.

After a brief break as a foreign language teacher, Alastair moved to the ESRC Centre for Business Relationship, Accountable, Sustainability and Society, to complete his PhD in association with the School of City and Regional Planning at Cardiff University.


Current Research

Alastair holds a second ESRC studentship, and is currently expanding on his interest in Fair Trade and sustainable development by investigating the viability of the governance system being integrated inside public procurement frameworks for positive effects in the developing world.
Research Interests

This broad interest has remained grounded in a strong interdisciplinary approach and Alastair maintains his interests in:

· Micro economic approaches to decision making in the developing world,

· Poverty, risk and development

· Trade and development

· Macro economic management

Expertise Keywords: development policy, public procurement, diversification, structural change, micro-economic analysis

Primary Expertise - Fair Trade Research
Discipline
Other
Research interest
Fair Trade, public procurement, diversification and structural change
Countries of expertise
Additional information on expertise
Secondary Expertise - Fair Trade promotion/coordination (non profit)
Role / Function
Co-ordinator
Additional information on expertise
Alastair developed and currently co-ordinates the Fairness UK network of researchers and practitioners in the United Kingdom. www.fairnessuk.ning.com