Opinion

The Grand Egyptian Festival: religion, heritage and social cohesion

On 19th January every year, at the stroke of midnight, thousands of Coptic Christians in Egypt jump into the river Nile or water canals nearby. Once in the water, they dunk themselves three times to commemorate the baptism of Jesus Christ in the River Jordan. The celebrations are commonly known...

Mariz Tadros

Architect students make a difference for refugees in Izmir and Lesvos

The refugee crisis is one of the biggest challenges for the global society and with the effects of climate change, it will continue to grow in scale and importance. In the light of these challenges, the School of Architecture at Umeå University launched a project that will also integrate into a...

Research on pastoralism highlights new directions for development

Insights from more than fifty years of IDS research on climate, environment and pastoralism have challenged conventional thinking about environmental change and led to wide-reaching impacts in practice and policy. The world is an uncertain, challenging environment for many people. This is true...

UK funded research essential to get vaccines to the poorest in the world – wherever they are

Populations around the world are placing their hope in vaccines as a way out of the Covid-19 pandemic, but even if lower-income countries can get the doses they need, vaccinating the hardest to reach is a complex challenge that needs to be evidence-informed to be successful.  With UK leadership...

Melissa Leach

Lessons for conducting phone-based surveys during Covid-19 and beyond

The lived experiences of the Covid-19 pandemic are starkly divided along gender lines, and the pandemic has already exacerbated gender inequalities within the home and in the labour market across countries. To understand the gendered impacts and experiences of the pandemic in urban Pakistan and...

Ali Cheema & 2 others

Understanding gendered experiences and impacts of Covid-19 in Pakistan

The lived experiences of the Covid-19 pandemic are starkly divided along gender lines, and the pandemic has already exacerbated gender inequalities within the home and in the labour market across countries. Building on our previous work to understand gender gaps in democratic accountability in...

Ali Cheema & 2 others

Navigating School Closures: How much are India’s students learning?

Recent global estimates suggest that school closures, unequal access to technology-based educational inputs, and other disruptions caused by the pandemic are likely to result in 'learning loss'. This presents a real fear of increasing school dropout rates, and aggravating existing equity gaps in...

‘The land is the economy, the economy is the land’, but does this include young people? Reflections from Zimbabwe

Ian Scoones

Climate Change and Livestock in the UK: The Politics of Policy Processes

Heritage rooted in landscape – memories and cultural survival in Iraq

Heritage and culture can be rooted in physical spaces, so when these come under threat or are permanently altered by conflict or climate change, this can have an impact on those intangible rituals and practices which can define communities and secure their survival. In this final blog, part of...

Mahir Hussein Ali

Sofya Shahab

Strengthening UK-China connections to accelerate knowledge sharing and learning

In May 2019, IDS became the UK Anchor Institution for the China International Development Research Network funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and supported by the Ministry for Commerce, China. The three-year project is enabling researchers to strengthen connections,...

The STEPS Centre’s final year: reflections on a 15-year journey