Institute of Development Studies

Reimagining Development - Spaces and Places

The Reimagining Development initiative brings together 34 research projects exploring crises and responses to crises.

A development success story, Southern Uganda

How have the crises affected 40 financial services co-operatives and the way they do business?

Aid architecture

What next for the MDGs? This policy discourse will explore the MDG experience so far and ideas for what next.

Assessing attitudinal shift in stakeholders of self help groups (SHGs) and microfinance programmes, India

Have the values, aspirations and development goals of programmes, participants and stakeholders of self help groups and micro credit changed?

Assessing societal maturation as a paradigm: development practitioners in UN/Quaker UN

Development practitioners - among those whose lives and livelihoods have been affected by current crises - will join a workshop exploring a new paradigm of societal development, and its practical implications for development policy implementation.

Better social welfare, Ukraine

Are crises affecting how the social welfare system in Ukraine provides for unemployment and childcare assistance, how it interacts and treats citizens seeking assistance?

Can a virtual space improve exchange among non-traditional stakeholders? Malawi

Using the Eldis Malawi Development Exchange research will explore how can online spaces influence discourse between non-traditional actors, particularly in terms of their response to current multiple crises?

China: a big power in the wind industry?

Co-operation, Competition or Conflict between China and Europe in the wind power industry

Crisis Watch

A network of researchers, policy-makers and practitioners working on the impacts and responses to financial crisis, sharing information globally and reflecting on its nature and consequences.

Development professionals: Reconciling personal values with the professional values, Sri Lanka

A dialogue with a virtual community of development professionals, living and working in Sri Lanka who are conscious of tensions between professional and personal values.

Development without imposed identities, China

Are Chinese attitudes towards self determinism, individualism and dissent changing as a result of growth, crisis and China's stronger post-crisis position? In conjunction with Pink Space NGO at the intersection of sexual and economic injustice.

Donors 2020

What will donor agencies look like in 2020? How are they reimagining development, and their role in it?
Environmental change and maize innovation pathways, Kenya

Entrepreneurship in the face of crisis?

A video project giving voice to poor maize farmers' on their lives and livelihoods in an area facing multiple crises of rapid environmental and technological change.

Inductance tax

The Robin Hood or Tobin tax fails to address the problem of spikes in markets. Could a panic tax - based on the rate of change of the aggregate market price - reduce the spikes observed in such time series.

Integrating visionary civil society responses to the convergence of global crises

How should the assumptions, ideas, values and relationships behind multilateralism be changed?

Narratives of crisis in a Kutchi village, India

What are the impacts of the global financial crisis on the livelihoods of wandering pastoralists, the landless, feudal lords, on women, men and children in a village in India?

Participation 2.0: Are new technologies and innovation models part of the answer to the development crisis?

Have new ICTs really delivered a new form of participation? How can ICTs work for greater participation and inclusion of marginal groups?

Private sector and development: Where are we going?

A one-day workshop bringing together the private sector and the development/charity sector to explore where the two sectors are going in an increasingly uncertain world.

Processes of change in a slum community, Bangladesh

Narratives of change from a slum community in Bangladesh.

Reimagining accountability

In partnership with Action Aid International's Impact Assessment Unit, based in Johannesbeurg, this site will explore how to think through, manage and act out multiple accountabilities, linked with the evolution of (ALPS) Accountability, Learning and Planning System.

Reimagining development with indigenous people, Brazil

Exploring new mechanisms for including indigenous people, their knowledge and their values in work on health, local governance and climate change.

Reimagining finance: The changing contract between public and private sectors

Where will investments be made in a post crises world? Is the state using its new leverage to encourage investments for the public good? Have banks and hedge funds changed their attitudes towards what they do? What is their social role?

Reorienting, reimagining, reclaiming: Development, change and crisis in Ethiopia

This site explores linkages between different actors - including farming communities in the Ethiopian Highlands, research organisations, NGOs, investors and universities - in order to understand crisis in Ethiopia and the role of institutions, policy frameworks, changes and emerging opportunities.

Roundtable on religion and development

Have faith based donors and organisations succeeded where others have failed? How has the crisis changed their positions and appeal?

Security sector reform, Democratic Republic of Congo

How are security-related decision-making processes functioning in the DRC and Africa more generally, given the new power balances between the West and China and Africa.

Sharing knowledge on low carbon energy at the community-level, China

Can a community-based networking platform bridge the global and local knowledge gaps on climate change?

Student perspectives on the meaning of the financial crisis for development

How have the ideas of IDS students - from 40 countries around the world - been shaped by the crises?

The economic crisis and the poor - perceptions from the UK public

An on-going internet-based survey of 5,000 people to analyse perceptions on aid in the current economic climate.

The Huairou Commission

Grassroots and NGO women leaders from around the world consider how smallholder women farmers are affected by and can engage with the new food and agriculture agenda.

The impact of the financial crisis on garment workers, Indonesia

How have changes affected employment, working conditions, employer and employee attitudes and worker-employer relations.

The Kabul 'Green Zone' - a 'Policy Island'

In Afghanistan, there is a growing disconnect between policy planning and grass-roots realities. How is this shaping significant shifts in ideas, values, relationships, methods, behaviours and knowledge?

The media's changing attitude to aid

Have the editorial teams of key news outlets in India, S. Africa and UK changed their reporting of aid and development?

The Obama promise: changing the face of development in the Arab world: A reality check

To what extent does Obama's promise translate into reimagined terms of engagement with the Muslim world in relation to supporting development?

Voices and agency of children on their inherited future, Philippines

Through group workshops and informal interviews this site will provide a snapshot of perceptions focussing on three sets of issues: aspirations, perceptions of risk and crisis, and future development challenges.

World Bank/USAID

How are these organisation's agendas being changed by recent crises?