Ashley Crowson

News from elsewhere: Journalism, social justice, development and the decolonisation of knowledge

Member of the Environment, Politics and Development research group.

My PhDresearch focuses on the Gemini News Service -a pioneering news service active 1967-2002. Emerging in the context of rapid decolonisation, Gemini focused on reporting social, political and environmental issues from the developing world to press outlets in the UK and across the Commonwealth. In particular, it challenged the practice of ‘parachute’ reporting of developing countries by western correspondents who represented these regions from European perspectives. Instead, Gemini relied on reporters resident in the countries about which they wrote to generate grounded understandings of local events. The aim of the research is to explore the cultural and political histories and geographies of Gemini’s journalism and to set this in the context of broader shifts in ways of knowing and reporting the global south, 1965- present.