Gordon Cumming

Gordon Cumming is Professor at Cardiff University. A former diplomat, he has published widely on French, British and European development and security policies towards sub-Saharan Africa. A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the Learned Society of Wales and the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, he has undertaken several projects funded by the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust. He is currently running a pilot project on foreign aid policies during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The project

Title: Jeux de blâme ou efforts concertés ? Une étude pilote sur les politiques d’aide étrangère pendant la pandémie de cornavirus

"My FMSH project in France can be divided into three distinct strands. The first involved collaborative research on the security dimension of foreign aid, specifically ‘Western’ support for African Security Initiatives such as the Group of 5 Sahel Joint Force. This resulted in an article in African Security. The second focused on the foreign aid arising out of French debt conversion programmes, the so-called Contrats de Désendettement et Développement (C2D). The third strand was a pilot project on UK and French foreign aid responses to the Coronavirus in Africa. It involved an initial exploration of how these key donors behaved within the ‘foreign aid regime’ (the system of norms governing aid over recent decades). Did they step up to leadership roles or did they, instead, turn inwards?"

Host institution : Conflits, représentations et dialogues dans l’univers anglo-saxon (CORPUS), Université de Picardie Jules Verne

Selective Bibliography

• Cumming, G. 2024. Recognising leadership potential: looking beyond comparative perspectives on aid. In: Akande, A. ed. Leadership and Politics: New Perspectives In Business, Government and Society. Springer Nature

• Cumming, G., Van Der Velde, R. and Chafer, T. 2022. Understanding the public response: a strategic narrative perspective on France’s Sahelian operations. European Security 31(4), pp. 617-638. (10.1080/09662839.2022.2038568)

• Chafer, T., Cumming, G. D. and van der Velde, R. 2020. France’s interventions in Mali and the Sahel: a historical institutionalist perspective. Journal of Strategic Studies 43(4), pp. 482-507. (10.1080/01402390.2020.1733987)

• Cumming, G. D. 2018. Towards an enhanced understanding of aid policy reform: learning from the French case. Public Administration and Development 38(5), pp. 179-189. (10.1002/pad.1842)

• Cumming, G. D. 2017. A prototypical case in the making? Challenging comparative perspectives on French aid. European Journal of Development Research 29(1), pp. 19-36. (10.1057/ejdr.2015.62)