Enduring, equitable partnerships are fundamental to our research, learning and teaching work.
We work with governments, multilaterals, philanthropic foundations, private sector actors, academia and civil society organisations to transform approaches to progressive social, political and economic change. These strategic collaborations are key to generating the knowledge, leadership and action required to achieve more equitable and sustainable development globally.
IDS has hundreds of research, learning and funding partnerships in over 50 countries around the world.
These range from multi-country research consortiums, collaborations between local, national and international teams, research to policy initiatives and community-driven projects that connect local researchers and activists with small businesses, practitioners and service providers.
We aspire to forge impactful and genuinely equitable partnerships in research for development, and we continue to reflect on what equal partnerships and decolonising knowledge entails in practice.
IDS is working on an action-learning initiative led by Southern Voice which aims to produce an action and research agenda to improve the problematic patterns of research partnerships in international development. The initiative is funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC).
Our study, Knowledge Translation in the Global South provides recommendations for funders to support more effective structures and strategies for the use of research for equitable development. This has already begun to influence the thinking of some key bilateral and philanthropic funders and sets out an exciting research agenda on getting evidence into use.
Our partnership with the University of Sussex is a crucial aspect to our work, with the University supporting and accrediting our post-graduate learning programmes and several active research partnerships including the Sussex Sustainability Research Programme.
We worked with research partners in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Uganda to highlight barriers faced by women, both in the workplace and linked to voting. The work yielded widely noted research which is helping to influence communities and authorities.
Amidst what is increasingly viewed as a time of crisis in development and in development studies itself, IDS is working with the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI) and other European academic institutes to consider how to acknowledge and integrate different knowledges and experiences into teaching and research.
Building, sharing and valuing local knowledge, with participatory approaches to research central to our approach, has been the springboard for work on the effects of climate change in coastal communities in India and Bangladesh as well as a project on climate resilient sanitation practices.
Working with partners has been central to our work on pandemics, from research partnerships in countries such as Uganda and Sierra Leone to bringing together evidence from around the world to support calls for more people-centred pandemic approaches.
IDS and the University of East Anglia (UEA) worked together to conduct a major review into the impact of microfinance and microenterprise interventions, revealing scant evidence that interventions have had a long lasting impact on poverty rates and wellbeing.