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Tessa Lewin

Tessa Lewin

Research Fellow

Tessa is a Research Fellow at IDS. She is a development professional with over 20 years of experience working on participatory action-research projects both as a researcher and visual practitioner. Tessa has extensive experience in participatory action research and project management.

She is a leading innovator in the use of diverse audio-visual technologies in development research, with substantial experience as a trainer in this regard; from the designing and facilitation of the photovoice project Through Children’s Eyes in 1999, with the Rockefeller Foundation, East Africa, to her more recent work involving digital storytelling, documentary film, and animation.

From 2007-2011 she managed the communication for Pathways of Women’s Empowerment. She completed her doctorate at the University of Brighton, on queer visual activism in South Africa. She currently co-convenes the MA in Gender and Development at IDS. She also co-leads the ‘policy and practice’ stream of IDS’ Countering the Backlash project. Her other work combines political and academic interests in children/youth, gender and sexuality, with creative media and research skills.

Recent publications include ‘Queer Visual Activism in South Africa’ (Open Access) in The Aesthetics of Global Protest: Visual Culture and Communication.

Thematic interests

Media, communication, digital technology, children, youth, gender, sexuality, film, arts-based and visual methodologies and activism.

Research

Project

Learning support to the ALIADAS-WVL programme in Mozambique

In this project, IDS designed and delivered a 5-day workshop in Nampula, Mozambique on behalf of the ALIADAS-WVL programme in March 2023. The ALIADAS-WVL programme convenes a network of NGOs working to defend the rights of women and girls across Mozambique, and requested support from IDS to...

Project

Healing Justice as a Framework for Feminist Activism in Africa

This study aimed to understand what Healing Justice means to Womn Humans Rights Defenders (WHRDs) and feminist activists in different African contexts, and to explore how and in what circumstances pathways to collective healing could be supported as an approach to feminist...

Programme

Youth employment and politics

Over 40 percent of global populations are under 25 yet young people cannot secure work and increasingly face a crisis of citizenship. Youth Employment and Politics at IDS builds on decades of research to develop knowledge and evidence that contributes to effective interventions that supports,...

Project

Action on Children’s Harmful Work in African Agriculture

Action on Children’s Harmful Work in African Agriculture (ACHA) is a seven-year research programme supported by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) that started in January 2020. The aim of the programme is to build evidence on: the forms, drivers, and experiences of...

Opinions

Opinion

Children as rights holders in the digital world

We, as guest editors, are seeking expressions of interest for a special issue of Global Studies of Childhood, entitled Children as rights holders in the digital world. Interested contributors should send a 500 word abstract (250 words for non-academic work) and a short bio of each...

23 July 2025

Opinion

Design and Development: A Dialogue part 1

Are designers doing development? Do development professionals practise design? Designers and development practitioners have in common that they try to (re)shape the future. They make financial, material, practical, processual, and institutional interventions to change lives and improve outcomes,...

Dominic Glover
Dominic Glover & 4 others

18 March 2025

Opinion

Design and Development: A Dialogue part 2

Are designers doing development? Do development professionals practise design? Designers and development practitioners have in common that they try to (re)shape the future. They make financial, material, practical, processual, and institutional interventions to change lives and improve outcomes,...

Dominic Glover
Dominic Glover & 4 others

18 March 2025

Opinion

Six ways to build solidarities for gender justice

Significant progress on gender equality has been made in past decades, but in recent years feminist and queer movements have faced a rising onslaught of violence and repression that targets and seeks to reverse progress on gender equality. Between 2019 and 2022, progress on gender equality...

Deepta Chopra
Deepta Chopra & 3 others

26 November 2024

Publications

Report

Rapid Scoping Review: Anti-Rollback Actors and Strategies

Rapid Scoping Review Report

This report presents the findings of a rapid scoping review of queer and feminist organisations and social movements countering roll back in 14 countries (Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, South Africa, and Türkiye)

Tessa Lewin
Tessa Lewin & 3 others

8 July 2025

Publication

Connecting, Contesting, and Consolidating

IDS Briefing

Resisting the rollback of women’s rights and LGBTQI+ rights. This Briefing is based on a rapid scoping review of anti-rollback actors and activities post-2015, in 14 countries: Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines,...

Tessa Lewin
Tessa Lewin & 2 others

28 March 2025

Publication

Cards Against Backlash: Forwards to a Feminist Future

This toolkit is produced by the IDS-hosted Countering Backlash programme. The programme carries out engaged research, generate new debates, and build capacity across networks and strategic partnerships with women’s, LGBTQ+ and other human rights organisations, activists, academics and...

Becky Faith
Becky Faith & 3 others

29 November 2024

Tessa Lewin’s recent work

News

Understanding gender backlash through Southern perspectives

New research published today in the IDS Bulletin reveals the extent to which gender and sexual rights are being reversed in a global wave of gender backlash. The research, based on evidence from Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Kenya, Lebanon, Uganda, and the United Kingdom, explores the...

7 March 2024

Past Event

Unsettling Apologies: Critical writings on apology from South Africa

There has recently been a global resurgence of demands for the acknowledgement of historical and contemporary wrongs, as well as for apologies and reparation for harms suffered. Drawing on the histories of injustice, dispossession and violence in South Africa, this book examines the cultural,...

14 November 2022

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