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.
Earning an income from work is an important step towards economic empowerment for women. However, paid work does not always automatically generate enough resources that support agency.
Therefore, it is important to ask how more and better jobs could be created for women that strengthen agency...
The question that this paper tries to answer is how to do this through the means of female entrepreneurship programmes within the context of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).
The World Health Organisation (WHO) warned in 2020 that people with disabilities, may be impacted more significantly by Covid-19 than general populations. They urged for governments to mitigate this impact by taking appropriate actions and protective measures.
As of March 2022, South Africa has...
As Brazil heads into a decisive election later this year, it finds itself at the forefront of the global debate on political extremism and disinformation. While trust in institutions and civic engagement are at a historic low, civil society organisations and movements are engaged in reversing...
Inclusive and rigorous peacebuilding evaluation is both vital and complex. In this blog we share examples of how we are innovating our methodologies to move towards participatory and adaptive practice.
The challenges of peacebuilding evaluation
Peacebuilding processes and interventions are...
The climate imperative to reduce production and consumption of fossil fuels is well recognized. But what is less well understood and supported is the need to ensure that the world’s poorest citizens, many of whom live in resource rich countries, are not left behind. A just transition – one...
There is an abundance of available evidence on the effectiveness of interventions aimed at preventing, detecting and treating malaria, TB and HIV in Nigeria.
The evidence suggests that future interventions concerning these three diseases should focus on health systems strengthening, considering...
Malaria, human immune deficiency virus (HIV) and tuberculosis (TB) are leading causes of death and public health threat to millions in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The DRC is the second most malaria affected sub-Saharan African country after Nigeria, with malaria being the leading cause...
In 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the addition of Disease X, a hypothetical infectious threat, to its blueprint list of priority diseases. In the construction of discourse that circulated following this announcement, conceptions of Disease X intersected with representations...
How and under what conditions does citizen-led social and political action contribute to empowerment and accountability? What are the strategies used, and with what outcomes, especially in settings which are democratically weak, politically fragile and affected by legacies of violence and...
21 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).