Through multidisciplinary research and policy engagement we bring new understanding and action on critical issues around health and health systems, and how they overlap with other systems such as food, as well as nutrition, sanitation, epidemics and zoonotic diseases. Enhancing understanding of how to ensure healthy lives for all is a vital part of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (Agenda 2030) and has been an integral focus of IDS’ work since its inception.
Our research and analysis on innovations in health services and systems – including work on identifying effective strategies to address the challenges of antimicrobial resistance – is accelerating progress towards achieving universal health coverage in Asia and Africa. Our work on nutrition spans the spectrum from dietary transition and globalisation of food systems, through to responding to the ways that marginalisation and inequity drive high child malnutrition rates. We bring vital social knowledge to aid effective preparedness and response on pandemics. We show how direct impacts on the spread of diseases such as Ebola can be achieved by bringing learning from research on social issues and contexts to the right people in the right organisations at the right time. Together with our global partners, we are generating and sharing new knowledge and evidence to identify the underlying causes of poor health and social inequalities, and the progressive policies and practices that can help bring about transformative change.
This Policy Briefing asks whether cash-plus programming is fit-for-purpose in protracted crises settings, and offers recommendations for enhancing its effectiveness.
For over 10 months, Sudan has been going through a horrific conflict, causing more than eight million people to be forcibly displaced. New research from the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) explores how aid actors can improve their food and cash support, with a focus on how it can be...
Sanitation remains one of the most off-track Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with 3.4 billion people, about 46 percent of the world’s population, still without access to safe sanitation facilities.
Approaches such as Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) have helped shift countries...
In 2011, the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) hosted a major conference on land grabbing to take stock of the impacts across the world. The event was convened by the recently formed Land Deal Politics Initiative (LDPI), which involved IDS through the Future Agricultures Consortium and the...
Amid the relentless brutality unleashed upon the Palestinian collective in Israel’s ongoing genocide, Omar al-Khatib, a dear friend and IDS research partner, has been arrested by Israeli forces, and is now being held in ‘administrative detention’ – incarceration without charge or...
Within the context of International Women’s Day and the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) 68 event, the IDS MA in Gender and Development (MAGAD) 2023 – 2024 cohort has curated a list of informative and inspiring feminist resources.
The MAGAD students recognise the transformative...
This brief explores the relationship between social protection and resilience, aiming to clarify conceptual linkages and contribute to WFP’s effective positioning and contribution within this space.
This brief explores the complementary and interconnected roles that social protection and...
Join us for the final Sussex Development Lecture this term, with guest lecturer Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Professor at the Africana Studies and Research Center, Cornell University and author of the highly acclaimed book Against Decolonisation: Taking African Agency Seriously.
Watch...
This is the fourth blog in a series summarising new research on Zimbabwe’s land reform. In this blog, I look at newly published material on agricultural commercialisation and the shifting political economy of command politics and capitalist expansion.
The land reform from 2000 overturned the...
Philanthropists must step up their funding for gender and women’s rights activists and organisations, against a well-organised anti-gender movement rolling back rights of women and LGBTQ+ people globally, worth $1bn in the USA alone and growing across Europe, warns a new report.
The new...
This report provides an overview on the Covid Collective research platform, how it was operationalised, and the learning which emerged from the three-year programme. The foundation of the Covid Collective’s theory of change was the network and relationships that were established and developed...
Backlash from conservative, patriarchal, religious and political forces is often seen as ‘the cost of doing business’ by feminist or LGBTQ+ activists. Yet how do philanthropic institutions who support gender justice respond to the scaled-up, well-financed and globally coordinated anti-gender...
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).