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Lisa Ann Richey

Professor

Emner
Internationale relationer Politik Krise Socialt ansvar Afrika

Primary research areas

State-So­ci­ety Re­la­tions: New Act­ors and Al­li­ances in Transna­tion­al Help­ing
My re­search in­vest­ig­ates how states and private act­ors like cor­por­a­tions, phil­an­throp­ists, celebrit­ies and cit­izens de­ploy aid as an en­gage­ment in polit­ics. These en­gage­ments en­twine al­tru­ism with geo­pol­it­ic­al strategy, value -for-money cal­cu­la­tions with feel­ings and pro­fes­sion­al­ism with ’mud­dling through.’ My first key pub­lic­a­tion in this area is New Act­ors and Al­li­ances in De­vel­op­ment (2014) with Stefano Ponte. A dec­ade ago, this ground­break­ing ed­ited col­lec­tion was the first in the field to identi­fy new fund­ing and ideas for aid bey­ond tra­di­tion­al de­vel­op­ment act­ors. My In­tro­duc­tion to the text is an agenda set­ting work that is still reg­u­larly used in teach­ing about gov­ernance in hu­man­it­ari­an­ism and de­vel­op­ment. The art­icles in this col­lec­tion point to im­ages and rep­res­ent­a­tions as in­creas­ingly im­port­ant in hu­man­it­ari­an and de­vel­op­ment 'brand­ing' and sug­gest fruit­ful new ground for crit­ic­al de­vel­op­ment stud­ies. My second key book in this area is Bat­man Saves the Congo: Busi­ness, Dis­rup­tion and the Polit­ics of De­vel­op­ment (2021) co-au­thored with Alex Budabin, Fol­low­ing an ed­ited book on Celebrity Hu­man­it­ari­an­ism and North-South Re­la­tions (2016), I con­trib­uted ori­gin­al Congo-based data and the the­or­et­ic­al frame­work link­ing cor­por­ate part­ner­ships and com­modi­fic­a­tion of hu­man­it­ari­an­ism in Bat­man Saves the Congo which was highly-praised in re­views as ‘thor­oughly re­searched and of­ten laugh-out-loud funny.’ The work comes out of my re­search pro­ject Com­modi­fy­ing Com­pas­sion: Im­plic­a­tions of Turn­ing People and Causes into Mar­ket­able Things, linked be­low. My re­cent re­search on state-so­ci­ety re­la­tions has been pub­lished in journ­als like Eco­nomy and So­ci­ety, Per­spect­ives on Polit­ics, and De­vel­op­ment and Change.
Every­day Hu­man­it­ari­an­ism: Eth­ics, Af­fects and Prac­tices of Cit­izen Help­ing
Every­day hu­man­it­ari­an­ism refers to the ex­pan­ded series of prac­tices in the every­day lives of cit­izens that pur­port to make a dif­fer­ence out­side the tra­di­tion­al bound­ar­ies of hu­man­it­ari­an activ­ity. It high­lights the mor­al re­spons­ib­il­it­ies and mu­tu­al ob­lig­a­tions that drive in­di­vidu­als to re­spond to the suf­fer­ing of oth­ers dur­ing times of ex­cep­tion. My first key pub­lic­a­tion set­ting the agenda for the concept of ‘every­day hu­man­it­ari­an­ism’ is in the 2018 journ­al art­icle “Con­cep­tu­al­iz­ing Every­day Hu­man­it­ari­an­ism: Eth­ics, Af­fects and Prac­tices of Con­tem­por­ary Glob­al Help­ing,” New Polit­ic­al Sci­ence which formed the in­tel­lec­tu­al corner­stone for my Every­day Hu­man­it­ari­an­ism in Tan­zania col­lab­or­at­ive re­search pro­ject, linked be­low. De­col­on­iz­ing the concept of every­day hu­man­it­ari­an­ism in col­lab­or­a­tion with glob­al South schol­ars has deepened and ex­pan­ded this re­search area with pub­lic­a­tions in journ­als in­clud­ing World De­vel­op­ment, Re­view of In­ter­na­tion­al Stud­ies, and Afric­an Af­fairs.
Com­modi­fy­ing Com­pas­sion: Eth­ic­al Di­lem­mas of Prof­it­able Help­ing
Un­like in the past when phil­an­throp­ists re­in­ves­ted part of their profits into so­cial good, near home or abroad, com­modi­fy­ing com­pas­sion is about ac­tu­ally profit­ing from the help­ing it­self. There is no sep­ar­a­tion between a hu­man­it­ari­an eth­ic of com­pas­sion­ate help­ing of oth­ers and a cap­it­al­ist eth­ic of profit­ing from the cre­ation of value that you can sell. My re­search on un­der­stand­ing busi­ness as a crit­ic­al play­er in glob­al help­ing has opened a new fron­ti­er of so­cial sci­ence work on hu­man­it­ari­an­ism and de­vel­op­ment. The pro­lif­er­a­tion of schol­ar­ship in these fields we see today was not there when I wrote my sem­in­al book Brand Aid: Shop­ping Well to Save the World with Stefano Ponte in 2011. A dec­ade and four of books later, it is. My re­cent pub­lic­a­tions on com­modi­fy­ing com­pas­sion have ap­peared in the journ­als Big Data and So­ci­ety, In­ter­na­tion­al Af­fairs, and Dia­logues in Hu­man Geo­graphy.

Re­think­ing Help: Power, Mar­kets, and Glob­al Com­pas­sion

I study how humanitarianism and ethical consumption are shaped by markets, corporations, and culture. My work reveals how business, branding, and celebrity activism transform global “helping” into a profitable industry. 

My research helps organizations critically evaluate corporate social responsibility, cause-related marketing, and ethical branding. I work with companies, NGOs, and governments to rethink how compassion is communicated and commodified. 

With extensive fieldwork in the Global South, especially in Tanzania, South Africa and Uganda, I bring grounded insights into everyday humanitarian practices that challenge top-down, Western-led approaches. 

As a professor, mentor, and public scholar, I aim to create more ethical, inclusive, and transparent models of global development.  

Publications

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maj 2025

How the Institutional Context Creates a Neoliberal Politics of Aid

An Italian Case Study

Lisa Ann Ri­chey, Professor

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marts 2025

While Development Goes Down the Drain, Capitalism Profits From “Helping”

A Response to Ilan Kapoor and Gavin Fridell

Lisa Ann Ri­chey, Professor

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januar 2025

Deservingness and Support in Everyday Humanitarianism

Mo­gens Kamp Ju­ste­sen, Professor

Innocent Pantaleo

Lisa Ann Ri­chey, Professor

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Recent research projects

Every­day Hu­man­it­ari­an­ism in Tan­zania

Ex­plores how or­din­ary people in Tan­zania prac­tice hu­man­it­ari­an­ism out­side form­al aid sys­tems and how this re­shapes loc­al and glob­al ideas of aid and solid­ar­ity.

Fun­ded by DAN­IDA through The Con­sultat­ive Re­search Com­mit­tee on De­vel­op­ment Re­search (FFU) and Dan­ish Fel­low­ship Centre . Every­day Hu­man­it­ari­an­ism in Tan­zania (EHTZ) is a joint re­search pro­ject between Den­mark and Tan­zania that delves into every­day hu­man­it­ari­an­ism in Tan­zania.

The pro­ject fo­cuses on how Tan­zani­ans re­spond to crises out­side form­al hu­man­it­ari­an struc­tures, chal­len­ging as­sump­tions about aid pre­dom­in­antly flow­ing from the Glob­al North. Through ex­tens­ive field­work, EHTZ ex­plores di­verse acts of giv­ing by or­din­ary cit­izens, aim­ing to un­der­stand their im­pact on loc­al dy­nam­ics and the broad­er hu­man­it­ari­an nar­rat­ive.

EHTZ uses both qual­it­at­ive and quant­it­at­ive ap­proaches that are cut­ting edge with­in so­cial sci­ences, in­clud­ing in depth field­work, sur­veys, and com­pre­hens­ive sur­vey ex­per­i­ments. A wide range of de­part­ments and re­search­ers are in­volved to cov­er the scope of the pro­ject and to fully un­der­stand and stat­ist­ic­ally ex­plain what mo­tiv­ates people to give hu­man­it­ari­an aid. The part­ner­ship with the Uni­ver­sity of Dar es Sa­laam builds on years of trust and is crit­ic­al to all as­pects, from the lo­gist­ics, aca­dem­ic un­der­stand­ing, the deep know­ledge of the case, and the im­ple­ment­a­tion of data. A large part of the col­lab­or­a­tion is centered around re­cip­roc­al ca­pa­city build­ing, for ex­ample through know­ledge shar­ing and co-au­thor­ing pub­lic­a­tions. The re­search pro­cess uses a de­col­on­ized ap­proach that is re­ward­ing across uni­ver­sit­ies and builds an in­ter­na­tion­al net­work of trust and ex­change. Moreover, it works to­ward de­col­on­iz­ing the concept of hu­man­it­ari­an­ism by re­cog­niz­ing how ac­tions taken by or­din­ary cit­izens works as hu­man­it­ari­an­ism as well.
See the project's publications here

Com­modi­fy­ing Com­pas­sion: Im­plic­a­tions of Turn­ing People and Causes into Mar­ket­able Things

Ex­am­ines how hu­man­it­ari­an causes are turned into mar­ket­able products and how busi­nesses, NGOs, and celebrit­ies profit from do­ing good.

Today’s mar­ket­place is in­und­ated with products sup­port­ing hu­man­it­ari­an causes that prom­ise to give aid to be­ne­fi­ciar­ies, provide ‘good feel­ings’ to con­sumers and pro­mote the brands of cor­por­a­tions and hu­man­it­ari­an NGOs. Fun­ded by the Dan­ish Coun­cil for In­de­pend­ent Re­search (DFF), Com­modi­fy­ing Com­pas­sion re­searched how the com­modi­fic­a­tion of hu­man­it­ari­an­ism (turn­ing people and causes into mar­ket­able things) has been linked to the privat­iz­a­tion of help (re­pla­cing pub­lic donors with private phil­an­thropy) with sig­ni­fic­ant and as of yet poorly un­der­stood con­sequences. Com­modi­fy­ing Com­pas­sion ex­plored these dy­nam­ics in three dif­fer­ent con­texts where hu­man­it­ari­an­ism has been a realm tra­di­tion­ally dom­in­ated by the state (Den­mark), the church (Italy) and the mar­ket (United States). The over­all ob­ject­ive of Com­modi­fy­ing Com­pas­sion was to un­der­stand how ‘help­ing’ has be­come a mar­ket­able com­mod­ity and how this im­pacts hu­man­it­ari­an­ism sym­bol­ic­ally and ma­ter­i­ally.
See the project’s publications here

Links

Per­son­al web­site
Lisa Ann Richey is a re­search­er and au­thor on the busi­ness of aid, hu­man­it­ari­an­ism and chan­ging North-South re­la­tions. She is cur­rently work­ing on Every­day Hu­man­it­ari­an­ism in Tan­zania and has re­cently com­pleted a re­search pro­ject on Com­modi­fy­ing Com­pas­sion.
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Every­day Hu­man­it­ari­an­ism in Tan­zania Pod­cast Series
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Outside activities

Vis­it­ing Pro­fess­or, Dept. of Cul­tures, Polit­ics and So­ci­ety, Univ. of Tur­in, Italy , 2025 -

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