Our research on governance, power relations, participation and citizen engagement, informs change processes in pursuit of social justice and social change. With power and politics central to our analysis, we support the generation of new evidence that contributes to improved processes for good governance, citizen engagement, empowerment and accountability.
We pioneer new ways of working with governments, communities, activists and academics, to understand the complex relationships and processes that exist across states, markets, and citizens, and between formal and informal institutions, to tackle issues such as digital inequalities, women’s participation and empowerment, decentralisation and local governance, rapid urbanisation, migration, taxation and domestic resource mobilisation, food security and hunger and nutrition. These draw on our extensive expertise in complex approaches to how change happens. Through our research and policy partnerships we are also bringing new insights on the role that rising powers and emerging economies such as China and Brazil have in relation to global governance and tackling development challenges such as sustainability and poverty. Our world-renown participatory research has a particular emphasis on systematic social exclusion facing women, people living in extreme poverty, people with disabilities, slaves bonded labourers, indigenous peoples and others. We advance cutting edge methodological development in action research, participatory visual methods, participatory mapping, participatory statistics, participatory Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) amongst others.
In alignment with the ‘leave no one behind’ framing of the UN Global Goals for Sustainable Development, the PMA programme is working with groups of people living in poverty and marginalisation to strengthen processes of citizen-led accountability.
The International Centre for Tax and Development (ICTD) provides research evidence that supports developing countries in raising domestic revenues equitably and sustainably, in a manner that is conducive to pro-poor economic growth and good governance.
In the 1990s, Romania decollectivised its agriculture under the Law on Agricultural Land Resources (Law 18/1991). Like many former socialist countries which had undertaken farm collectivization under socialism on a large scale, members of former collective farms who were deemed the ‘rightful...
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...
This paper presents different types of governance mechanisms that can be present in a specific value chain and explores how these can be used or need to be modified in view of intentions to reduce children’s harmful work.
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...
Promoting the right to freedom of religion or belief (FoRB) is a foreign policy priority for several countries, their concerns accentuated by considerable evidence of rising levels of violations of this right worldwide. This puts a premium on solid evidence and on clear assessment criteria to...
On the day of the new US President’s inauguration, there are positive signs that the new administration could bring about rapid transformation in global politics - above all in tackling climate change by promoting dialogue, cooperation and collaboration. This comes at a pivotal moment ahead of...
Understanding and addressing exclusion in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic
This session is designed to meet the needs of health and social development advisers and those from the wider health network and from other cadres with an interest in health, equity and...
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...
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...
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...
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...
In an extraordinary time of challenge and change, we use more than 50 years of expertise to transform development approaches that create more equitable and sustainable futures. The work you do with us will help make progressive change towards universal development; to build and connect solidarities for collective action, locally and globally. The University of Sussex has been ranked 1st in the world for Development Studies for the past five years (QS World University Rankings by Subject).