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.
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...
Countries have the potential to tax the digital economy through a combination of at least these four measures, which can be incorporated into their industrial policy and revenue collection strategies.
We highlight that overly zealous tax targets can be actively counter productive to tax administration and suggest five concrete ways to set better targets.
This briefing provides the reflection of a peer researcher working on the Early Childhood Development in Ealing (ECDE) project. The project gathered the perspectives of 77 parents, carers, and 10 children across the borough on services and support for young children (aged 5 and under).
This...
This briefing highlights key findings from the Early Childhood Development in Ealing (ECDE) project. The project gathered the perspectives of 77 parents, carers, and 10 children across the borough on services and support for young children (aged 5 and under).
This initiative aimed to understand...
Gender backlash is continually gaining momentum across the globe, and social and political institutions and policies are being dismantled. Gender justice activists and women’s rights organisations are having to mobilise quickly to counter these attacks.
Organised by the Countering Backlash...
This working paper explores how philanthropic institutions with a history of supporting women’s and LGBTQ+ rights and democracy are seeing and responding to anti-gender backlash, and the background dynamics shaping the struggle.
It is based on a scan commissioned by the IDS-led Countering...
As explicit biases become increasingly rare, this policy brief argues that the implicit and explicit bias framework is no longer fit for guiding policy towards improved tax equity and gender equality.
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...
Far from seeing continued steady progress on gender equality, we are currently witnessing significant backlash against gender and sexual rights. Limited and hard-fought gains for some are being reversed, co-opted, and dismantled – all amplified through new social media and digital...
This event will launch the new IDS Bulletin ‘Understanding Gender Backlash: Southern Perspectives’. It will address the urgent question of how we can better understand the recent swell of anti-gender backlash across different regions, exploring different types of actors, interests,...
To mark International Women’s Day 2024, colleagues from the Sustaining Power: Women’s struggles against contemporary backlash in South Asia (SuPWR) project, of which IDS is a partner, share their essential feminist reads.
Ranging from meditations and essay collections to academic...
6 March 2024
Why learn with us.
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).