Robert Chambers (development scholar)

He married Jennifer Scott, who he met in Glasgow, and has three children. In 2020 he suffered an amputation below the knee, describing the immersion of over 10 weeks as a patient and participant-observer in an NHS hospital and then in a private sector care home.

His work on resettlement and irrigation schemes, and public administration, was the subject of his PhD, and early work in Kenya and the UK. It was only from the 1980s that his work on rapid and participatory forms of appraisal were developed.

During his time teaching at University of Nairobi in Kenya in the 1960s, Chambers started rock climbing. Throughout his career he did multiple first ascents notably in Kenya and India. Of particular note is his first ascent of Mt. Ololokwe in Northern Kenya by The Original Route which he completed in 1965 with Henry Mwongela.

Chambers grew up in a middle class family in Cirencester, England. He won a scholarship to Marlborough College boarding school from 1945-1950, and another to Cambridge University, which was interrupted by National Service. He graduated in 1955 (1st, History). He joined and led the Gough Island Scientific Survey for the British government in 1956, before attending the University of Pennsylvania where he failed to complete a PhD in history. In 1958 he joined the HM Overseas Civil Service in Kenya, working in Maralal from 1958-1960. Before and after Independence he lectured at the Kenya Institute of Administration and the East Africa Staff College, returning to Britain in 1966 where he lectured at the University of Manchester and completed a PhD. From 1967 he lectured at the University of Glasgow and from 1969, the University of Nairobi. He joined the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex in 1972. Some time later he was infamously turned down for a Professorship at IDS on the grounds of insufficient publications in academic journals, despite his world renown exceeding those on the panel, achieving this only in 1995 at the age of 63, not long before retirement. During time at IDS he had lengthy secondments to India and other countries.

Robert John Haylock Chambers OBE (born 1 May 1932) is a British academic and development practitioner. He spent his academic career at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex. In 2013 he became an honorary fellow of the International Institute of Social Studies.