Richard Heeks

Principal Investigator

Richard Heeks is Chair in Development Informatics at the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, and Director of the Centre for Development Informatics.  He has been consulting and researching on informatics and development for more than 30 years.  His book publications include India’s Software Industry (1996), Reinventing Government in the Information Age (1999), Implementing and Managing eGovernment (2006), and Information and Communication Technology for Development (2018). You can find a full list of his publications here.

His research interests are data-intensive development, e-resilience and e-sustainability, digital development, and the digital economy in developing countries; the latter being supported by the ESRC-funded strategic research network, “Development Implications of Digital Economies” of which he was convenor.  He has a PhD in Indian IT industry development, directs the MSc programme in ICTs for Development, and runs the ICT for Development blog.

Richard’s role is co-lead for Social Science on the South Africa Fairwork project, together with Prof. JP van Belle. They will have particular responsibility for developing the evidence base on platform labour and decent work standards that will support development of platform ratings and a code of practice. Richard is also a Co-Investigator on the India Fairwork project.