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Impact

Over nearly 60 years, IDS has played a key role in development thinking, policy, and practice around the world.

A girl with long dark hair in a pink long-sleeved top leans over to write on a flip chart .
A girl contributes to a participatory research group in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Photo credit: CLARISSA

Our research, teaching and action on topics as diverse as social protection, agricultural livelihoods, and pathways to change has influenced generations of development professionals.

Our work is creating impact by:

  • Changing awareness and understanding of complex social, environmental and economic issues, helping to shift attitudes around particular issues.
  • Building and strengthening networks and communities of practice that can enable research to be produced, shared, and connected with policy and practice.
  • Strengthening the capacity of institutions, individuals or systems, empowering communities and creating the conditions under which knowledge can be turned into action.
  • Influencing the creation or implementation of policies or practices which can stimulate more effective development.

Stories of impact

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Showing 1–12 of 83 results

Impact Story

Training with IDS: Community engagement and involvement in a health context

Last year I attended the IDS Enabling Empowered Community Engagement and Involvement (CEI) in Global Health Research short course, in my capacity as CEI Manager at the NIHR Global Health Research Centre for NCDs and Environmental Change. My role involves supporting the coordination of CEI...

Maroof Khan, Community Engagement and Involvement Manager, NIHR Global Health Research Centre for Non-communicable Diseases and Environmental Change

9 September 2025

Impact Story

Stories of success from our teaching programme

MA experience leads to collaboration for policy change A module during her MA Development Studies (2023–24) prompted Nooreen Musheer to take a ‘deeper look’ at the disempowering effect of unpaid domestic labour, undertaken chiefly by women and girls. For her dissertation, Nooreen spent...

3 September 2025

Impact Story

Working collaboratively for gender justice

IDS-led research is using innovative ways to build trust and connections among feminist movements, by working collaboratively with women’s rights activists to help them counter growing hostility to gender equality, and to sustain gains made. Sustaining Power: Women’s struggles against...

31 August 2025

Impact Story

Empowering early career researchers to advance disability-inclusive development

IDS has coordinated the Disability Inclusive Development Network as part of an initiative to support disability-inclusive research and knowledge systems. Early-career researchers from across the globe have built new connections, strengthened their research skills, and gained the confidence to...

13 August 2025

Impact Story

Consortium builds trust and evidence in post-pandemic Bangladesh

A wide-ranging consortium led by IDS has investigated various social and political impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and economic crisis on Bangladesh, to draw lessons for handling future shocks. Funded by the UK’s FCDO, Bangladesh Office, the Covid-19 Learning, Evidence and Research (CLEAR)...

8 August 2025

Impact Story

Future development leaders find their vocations and voices at IDS

IDS teaching aims to produce the next generation of informed and knowledgeable leaders and experts, equipping them to respond to societal and environmental challenges. A launch pad for careers Eesha Kapoor and Shreyan Acharya graduated from the MA Development Studies course in the 2021-2022...

1 September 2024

Impact Story

Influencing policy change in Rwanda and a shift in global tax governance

The Rwandan government changed key aspects of its tax policy following pioneering research by the International Centre for Tax and Development (ICTD), based at IDS. In recent years, mass registration campaigns have been considered by policymakers and donors alike as a speedy way to boost...

30 August 2024

Impact Story

BASIC partnership spurs more positive social assistance practices

In a recent example of effective, equitable partnerships, action research methods shared by IDS have contributed to improving social assistance practices that were distressing local people. The change was the result of partnership working between IDS Research Fellow Jackie Shaw and IDS...

26 August 2024

Impact Story

Powercube tool empowers UK nurses to act

Launched in 2009, the Powercube.net is a toolbox for analysing power relations to further social change. Developed by IDS Research Fellow John Gaventa, with Research Associate Jethro Pettit, and a number of partners, the website allows global audiences to access a number of resources. Over the...

24 August 2024

Impact Story

Working children as agents of change against child labour

Children working in Bangladesh’s leather industry and Nepal’s adult entertainment sector have co-developed ways to improve their lives as participants in Child Labour: Action-Research-Innovation in South and South-Eastern Asia (CLARISSA), a major IDS-led participatory programme focusing on...

20 August 2024

Impact Story

PASTRES shows pastoralism offers sustainable pathways

IDS has a strong legacy of research that has helped to shape climate and sustainability policy debates around the world. The now-completed PASTRES (Pastoralism, Uncertainty and Resilience: Global Lessons from the Margins) programme epitomises this. Its emphasis was on learning about responses...

4 August 2024

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