About me

Tim Unwin (born 1955) is Secretary General (formerly Chief Executive Officer) of the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO), Chair of the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in the UK, Emeritus Professor of Geography and UNESCO Chair in ICT4D at Royal Holloway, University of London. From 2001-2004 he led the UK Prime Minister’s Imfundo: Partnership for IT in Education initiative based within the Department for International Development, and from 2007 he was Director and then Senior Advisor to the World Economic Forum’s Partnerships for Education initiative with UNESCO. He was previously Head of the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London (1999–2001), and has also served as Honorary Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) (1995-1997).  He has written or edited 15 books, and more than 200 papers and other publications, including “Wine and the Vine” (Routledge, 1991), “The Place of Geography” (Longman, 1992), as well as his edited “Atlas of World Development” (Wiley, 1994) and “A European Geography” (Longman, 1998). His research has taken him to some 25 countries across the world, from Estonia to Sierra Leone, and Ethiopia to Singapore, and he has worked on subjects as diverse as the role of banknotes as expressions of national identity, and the historical-geography of viticulture and the wine trade. Over the last decade his research has concentrated on information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D), focusing especially on the use of ICTs to support people with disabilities, and to empower out of school youth.  His latest collaborative book, entitled simply ICT4D, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2009.  He is also a Fellow of Education Impact.  He started using WordPress for blogging on 18th December 2008.

Links to my main activities are as follows:

• Secretary General, Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation
• UNESCO Chair in ICT4D and Emeritus Professor of Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London
• Chair of the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission
• International Advisory Board of the International Multilateral Partnership Against Cyber Threats (IMPACT)
• Honorary Professor, Research School of Arid Environment and Climate Change, Lanzhou University, Gansu, China
• Honorary Vice-President, Commonwealth Youth Orchestra
• Fellow Education Impact
• On the editorial boards of
  • Third World Quarterly
  • Children’s Geographies
  • Aurora Geographical Journal
  • triple-c (cognition-communication-cooperation)

Videos and audio:

• Interviewed at WCIT 2012 by Maximillian Jacobson-González, 6th December 2012
• Lecture to celebrate 25 yeas of the Omar Dengo Foundation in Costa Rica, entitled Multistakeholder Partnerships for Educational Technology: Critical Reflections, 2nd October 2012, San José, Costa Rica
• Interviewed by John Wells on Gov.2.0 Radio on the theme of Beyond the hype: Gov-tech across the Commonwealth of Nations, September 2012.
• Seminar on ‘Technology and development: the contribution of OER‘ at the University of Cambridge, Faculty of Education, 9th May 2012.
• Participating in the CTO and UNESCO Chair in ICT4D debate at ICTD2012 in Atlanta on mobiles, social media and democracy (challenging – at the last minute I had to argue against what I really thought!), 15th March 2012
• Moderating the youth session on social media at the CTO’s e-Gov Africa conference in Botswana, 6th March 2012
• Participating in the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) debate on ‘Mobile learning for the hard to reach‘, 3rd November 2011, Doha
• Contribution to the WSIS 2015 review – interviewed by the Knowledge Societies Division of the Communication and Information Sector of UNESCO
• Interviewed at the WSIS Forum 2011 on 18th May 2011
• Chairing the High Level Dialogue on Cybersecurity at the WSIS Forum, 18th May 2011 held at the ILO
• Chairing the Opening Ceremony and High Level Plenary at the WSIS Forum, 16th May 2011 held at the ILO
• Responding to questions about ICT4D in Africa in the RGS-IBG 21st Century Challenges series on digital technology in Africa, May 2011
• Lecture at Peking University on 12th April 2011, entitled “Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D): a journey of understanding“
• Keynote address on “Balancing Democracies” at the “Commonwealth, Human Rights and Development” conference held at Cumberland Lodge from 11th-13th March 2011,
• Keynote on “The role of e-learning in fostering development“, at the Rethinking Education in the Knowledge Society conference held in Monte Verità, Switzerland, on 10th March 2011
• Interviewed by Florian Sturm about my role as Chair of the ICTD2010 conference held at Royal Holloway, University of London, 13th-16th December 2010 (Part 1, Part 2)
• Marieme Jamme met Professor Tim Unwin, December 2010
• My overview of the session I moderated on “Appraising the Impact of ICTs” at the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) in Doha, 8th December 2010
• Interviewed by Oliver Hanschke at “ICT for Rural Economic Development” conference in Berlin 19th November 2010
• m4Development: critical reflections at mLife conference, Brighton, 28th October 2010
• Overview of the ICT4D Collective for Royal Holloway, University of London’s, new web-site, September 2010
• In programme on ICT4D on Voxafrica’s Shoot the Messenger on 16th August 2009
• Participating as a mudfish in Mary McPalm’s story told at UCAD in Senegal, May 2009 – as Mary says, “the important part is the participation”
• Thoughts on e-Learning Africa 2009
• @ Africa Gathering, interviewed by Jonathan Marks 25th April 2009
• Interview with Clint Rogers about the ICT4D book as an introduction to a video conference session to be held with his students across the world, 23rd April 2009
• Keynote on “Partnerships and post-constructivist education in development practice” at UOC UNESCO Chair in e-Learning Fifth International Seminar (Teaser), Barcelona, November 2008
• Interviewed by Jon Gregson on Imfundo, partnerships and the origins of the ICT4D Collective
• Part of plenary session at e-Learning Africa in Addis Ababa, 2006 [Just discovered that this  had some 1,810 hits on YouTube as of 19/4/2010!]

For further links, visit the ICT4D Collective’s site at http://www.ict4d.org.uk