Institute of Development Studies

About the Participation Research team

Our origins

The origins of the PPSC team were back in 1995 when the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) provided funding allowing Robert Chambers to set up a resource centre to spread information on participation, promote south-south networking, and start a small programme of action research and learning. Between 1998-2006 further flexible funding from SDC, the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) allowed us to broaden our work even further with spin-offs to other programmes and the creation of a group of researchers and communicators that became the current team.

Our development

During the mid to late 90s, we worked on methods for strengthening participation and on expanding participation in public policies, development initiatives and governance processes. At that time, in most countries, there were not many open spaces for recognizing and listening to multiple voices. Many individuals, minorities and social groups had little opportunity to exercise their rights, including their right to be heard.

Since this time we secured other parallel funding from various donors, particularly DFID, in relation to working with Southern partners on themes such as citizenship, accountability, rights and empowerment. In 2004 we established an MA in Participation, Power and Social Change hat enables practitioners to explore how they can become more effective in promoting inclusive development and change in different situations.

We have worked, learnt and shared with those directly suffering from and combating discrimination and injustice; with those championing change from within powerful organizations and networks and, through our collaborative teaching and training programmes with the next generation of activists, policymakers and researchers. Among others, international development organizations draw on our diverse experiences from policy, practice and grass-roots engagement to support their own efforts to reduce poverty and secure the realization of rights.

Our recent work

Much of our recent work, has shifted towards exploring the conditions that enable individuals and organized groups to imagine their world differently and to realize that vision by changing the relations of power that have sustained injustices. We move beyond a linear model of 'research to policy to practice', embedding research within inclusive processes of social and institutional learning and change. How we work is inseparable from what we work on. We pay attention to methodological plurality, the ethics of power in relationships and to strengthening the capacities of a diversity of actors.

Our team has developed a unique identity. Straddling the worlds of grass-roots practice, development policy making and academia we help connect and add value to those working for more sustainable and just societies from very diverse perspectives and locations.

Find out more

For further information on our research themes, see our research themes page. For information about individual areas of work, see our project and outputs pages.

For general enqueries please email ppsc@ids.ac.uk

Latest Team Publications >>

• Tadros, M. (forthcoming) Islamist Politics in the Middle East: The Muslim Brotherhood, Oxford: Routledge Press
• Chambers, R. (2012) Provocations for Development, Rugby: Practical Action Publishing
• Burns, D. (2012) 'Action Research for Development and Social Change', IDS Bulletin 43.3, Brighton: IDS
• Greig, A. and Edstrom, J. (2012) 'Mobilising Men in Practice: Challenging Sexual and Gender-based Violence in Institutional Settings' , Brighton: IDS
• Kabeer, N. Khan, A. and Adlparvar, N. (2012) 'Afghan Values or Women’s Rights? Gendered Narratives about Continuity and Change in Urban Afghanistan', IDS Working Paper 387, Brighton: IDS