Our interdisciplinary research explores how pathways to sustainability, green transformations and equitable access to resources such as land, water and food can be achieved and help us meet the environmental as well as human development-related goals of the UN Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development.
Our work builds on a long tradition of critical social science engagement with environmental issues and resource politics in collaboration with partners globally. It explores how pathways to sustainability are shaped by political-economic and social processes, and understands how they are driven by technology, markets, states and citizens. Our research sheds new light on how we can achieve green transformations that move us from fossil fuel to renewable energy, from throw-away to circular economies. It addresses the politics of sustainability, and understands how transformations occur at local levels as well as global, in both rural and urban settings, and be led by citizens as well as national governments. In doing so, it shines a light on how sustainable resource use, consumption and production is shaped by issues such as gender, livelihoods and politics.
The ESRC STEPS Centre (Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability) is an interdisciplinary global research and policy engagement centre.
To increase the effectiveness of social assistance on child nutrition, programmes are increasingly combined with behaviour change communication for improved infant and young child feeding (BCC for IYCF).
Unfortunately, there is limited knowledge about which BCC strategies are most effective...
We are thrilled to officially launch the 'Routledge Handbook of Smuggling' with an introduction by its editors, some of its authors, and a discussion of key issues in the contemporary study of smuggling.
Watch the video now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6rYAlNAGnk
Listen to the audio...
The unprecedented threat posed by the Covid-19 pandemic has presented a crisis for the international humanitarian system. At a time when the number of people in need of assistance has drastically expanded, humanitarian funding has been cut as countries focus on their domestic economies....
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is an increasingly important global health threat, but the pipeline of new antimicrobials under development is inadequate. Developing new antimicrobials is risky, with little financial reward, prompting calls for governments to adopt novel industrial and innovation...
It is with great sadness that former IDS Fellow Professor Jude Howell died peacefully on Friday the 29 April, at the Martlets Hospice in Brighton.
IDS Research Associate, Richard Crook, who worked with her closely wrote:
'Jude Howell was one of the UK’s leading authorities on the politics...
Motivation:
There are three puzzling features of sub-Saharan African tax systems: tax administrations maintain records on vast numbers of small enterprises that actually provide no revenue; they continually invest resources into registering even more of these “unproductive taxpayers”; and...
A limited but growing number of studies point to mixed effects of social protection on social cohesion. Relatively little is known about the role of social cohesion on access to and impact of social protection. Based on in-depth qualitative research in Burundi and Haiti, this paper explores the...
The unprecedented threat posed by the Covid-19 pandemic has presented a crisis for the international humanitarian system. At a time when the number of people in need of assistance has drastically expanded, humanitarian funding has been cut as countries focus on their domestic economies....
The effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on global value chains has been topical of late, yet little work has been done to explore how interactions between value chain businesses and state actors, which we refer to as the state-business relations and global value chain nexus (SBR-GVC nexus), have...
In Myanmar, almost one in ten children are engaged in child labour and more than half of the working children are doing hazardous work. The Covid-19 pandemic and responses to it have far-reaching social and economic consequences for vulnerable populations, including children in the worst forms...
In this episode of the IDS podcast Between the Lines, Ian Scoones and Andrea Cornwall, editors of the book Revolutionizing Development: Reflections on the work of Robert Chambers interview Robert Chambers about his work and legacy.
Listen now
The book which has just been made open access...
28 April 2022
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).