Janet Townsend

Janet Townsend is a Senior Research Investigator at the University of Newcastle, UK. She retired from lecturing in Geography at the University of Durham, UK after 34 years. Janet engages in participatory research with poor women in low-income countries. She is concerned with issues of poverty, power, self-empowerment and the (dangerous) power of academics, particularly those in prosperous countries. For many years, she worked with pioneer colonists in the rainforests of South America, particularly Colombia. Then she engaged in participatory research with the women pioneers, who were enthusiastic about the work of NGOs. This led her to seek to understand the extraordinary growth and dynamism of NGOs today.
She has worked with NGOs in eight states of Mexico for the book Women and power: Fighting patriarchies and poverty; in Ghana, India and Mexico for the book Knowledge, power and development agendas: NGOs, North and South, published by INTRAC for NGOs; and in Ghana and India for NGOs and the State in the 21st Century (due to publish December 2006) with INTRAC.
Janet has a D.Phil. in Geography from the University of Oxford, UK, and received the Edward Heath award from the Royal Geographical Society for work in women and development in 1995.