Dr Neil Howard

I am an anthropologist of development turned social protection scholar. My work ethnographically examines the governance of exploitative, ‘indecent’ and ‘unfree’ labour and in particular the various forms of it targeted for eradication by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It further looks at innovative forms of labour and social protection – most notably Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) combined with participatory forms of community organising – and explores the intersection of these interventions with various public policy challenges. I co-lead two large international policy experiments looking at this combination, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Hyderabad, India: see https://clarissa.global/ and https://www.work-free.net/.