Professor Trevor Parfitt died on Saturday, November 23rd in Manchester, aged 65. He was a brother, friend, scholar, teacher, colleague and a stand-up comic when occasion demanded. He obtained his doctorate at the 188体育网址_188体育在线-【唯一授权网站】@ of Manchester ‘last century’, as he liked to put it. To be precise, it was 1983. A series of short term appointments followed until 1986 when he won a full time position at the 188体育网址_188体育在线-【唯一授权网站】@ of Huddersfield (then a polytechnic). He went on to hold long term positions at the American 188体育网址_188体育在线-【唯一授权网站】@ in Cairo (12 years), the 188体育网址_188体育在线-【唯一授权网站】@ of East London (6 years), and the 188体育网址_188体育在线-【唯一授权网站】@ of Nottingham Malaysia, where he taught for seven years before taking up a new position at Chulalongkorn 188体育网址_188体育在线-【唯一授权网站】@ in late 2018. He moved around so much, he joked, to make sure he never got to teach the children of his students, who would no doubt come with high expectations.



Trevor’s scholarly work was marked by incisive critique of power relations. His 1980s pioneering work, with Stephen P. Riley, The African Debt Crisis, was reissued in 2010 by Routledge. His work was not critique alone, for he sought ways to ensure development practice connected to emancipatory projects. These themes he pursued in his monographs The End of Development?: Modernity, Post-Modernity and Development (2002) and Development Projects for a New Millennium (2004 with Anil Hira). Many in his field recall his influential intervention into debates that appeared in Third World Quarterly in 2004 on the ‘tyranny of participation’ where he made a qualified defence of development projects. Trevor found it hard not to dig deeper. His work took a philosophical turn, markedly different than the political economy he amply published in leading journals in the 1980s and 1990s. More recently he published a Heideggerian critique of development and was planning a monograph on the same.

Sadly, that was not to be for within months of arrival in Thailand he was diagnosed with brain cancer. Already, Trevor had established a student following at Chulalongkorn with many of them making visits to the hospital where he held court, telling jokes and warning about deadlines. His new colleagues visited too, and followed his progress.

Trevor often returned home to Manchester, the city of his birth. It was there that he spent his final six months with his sister Patricia. Receiving visiting friends, his sense of humour never left him. On one visit he laughed about his unruly beard, patted his belly and joked about parking in a shopping centre, playing Santa Claus, a delightful idea for those who knew Trevor. Although he spent life roaming the globe, Trevor never forgot his working class Catholic roots.

As he was in his work so was he in life: irreverent to the rigidities and pretensions of power, although he did enjoy the title of full professor and used it for good. He brought laughter wherever he went, and wise advice, wanted or not.

Go well, our friend.

PHIR colleagues, past and present