Opinion

Cultural mixing and mixed identities – How to protect cultural rights for all

Our cultural lives and rights are all connected and complex. To paraphrase the Haitian poet Jacques Stephen Aléxis, we are all the children of “an infinity of cultures.”  Cultures are hybrid and “involved in one another”, in the words of Palestinian scholar Edward Said. If we are to...

Translation to reach a global research audience

Over the past few years at IDS, colleagues in the Knowledge, Impact and Policy cluster have been considering how to best meet an increasing need to produce high-quality translations of research publications when budgets are limited. In an effort to improve the effectiveness of this process, we...

Beth Richard

Alice Webb

Rejuvenating the IDS building imagery

In March 2020, the IDS building fell silent after the worldwide outbreak of Covid-19. Following long months of lockdowns and uncertainly, in early 2021 we began to see the building reopening and our community being able to return to being in the same space. In the conversations about...

James Andrews

The politics of control in Zimbabwe’s Covid times

Ian Scoones

The Food Systems Summit: an opened-ended story

Assessing our own gender equality and social inclusion credentials

Taking action on climate change at IDS

Climate change is one of the most urgent and challenging issues faced globally and, at the 2019 IDS staff retreat, a discussion on the concerns shared by many prompted launch of the IDS Climate Action Taskforce. The focus was on how the institute could take action to reduce its impact on...

Imogen Bellwood-Howard

Martin Gardner

Putting climate justice at the heart of net zero

What does net zero actually involve and who does it impact? IDS researchers highlight the cost to groups carrying the burden of decarbonisation and argue that pathways to achieving net zero targets must be just, fair and equitable. If not, they risk making the situation even worse for those...

Gerardo Torres Contreras & 2 others

The world’s leaders could end the pandemic, but they are failing us

It is more than a year and a half into the pandemic and nine months since the Covid-19 vaccines were first distributed. Despite great progress in preventing and treating the virus, the greatest failure has been that vaccines and other therapeutics are not equitably distributed. This human...

Megan Schmidt-Sane

Peter Taylor

“Education is the thing Afghans need”

How can participatory research help create the change needed in the world?

The new Sage Handbook of Participatory Research and Inquiry – edited by Danny Burns, Jo Howard and Sonia Ospina, with contributions from 137 authors in 71 chapters is launched this week. Our world is in a moment of existential jeopardy. The predicted impacts from climate change mean that it...

Danny Burns & 2 others

Two developments for South-South trade and investments post Covid-19

Between 2000 to 2016, countries of the global South, in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, have seen their collective share of world GDP rise from 28% to 40.6 per cent According to UNCTAD’s 2018 World Investment Report, alongside South-South trade volumes have seen sharp increase...

Mateusz Bratek & 2 others