This post is co-authored with Irene Guijt If we agree that evidence-informed policy and practice are good things, we need to think about what kind of research gets commissioned. Some kinds of research are definitely more useful than others.  We’ve been discussing the urgent needs in Covid research with Heather Marquette (after her great April FP2P posts on this) and

Guest post by Melanie Pinet and Carmen Leon-Himmelstine of the ODI Covid-19 is an unprecedented moment, halting life as we know it. For the global development community, the effects have been profound. Several NGOs have had to scale back or completely stop their operations overseas, while local actors and civil society are rapidly organising to respond to the crisis through their own

Guest post by Lavinia Tyrrel, Linda Kelly, Chris Roche and Elisabeth Jackson In Love in the Time of Cholera Gabriel Garcia Marquez plays on the themes of love and passion, comparing them to a plague like cholera. Referring to the two lovers in the story he notes “…if they had learned anything together, it was that wisdom comes to us

As part of their Masters in International Development and Humanitarian Emergencies, LSE students do a consultancy for aid agencies and others. Here Chiara Jachia, Natalie Schwarz, Hanna Toda and Anjuman Tanha discuss the Covid implications of their consultancy on Informal Social Protection. Oxfam’s Larissa Pelham (contact larissa.pelham[at]oxfam.org if you want to know more about its work) introduces their project: ‘Informal

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I’ve been thinking about feedback in terms of the way Covid is playing out on the ground. Or rather, the lack of it. Lockdown interrupts/diminishes the flow of information from the ground to governments. Decision makers, be they politicians or senior officials, can’t send out researchers or underlings to find out what’s going on in the villages, cities and shanty

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Second installment from Heather Marquette In yesterday’s post, I looked at some of the social and political complexities around Covid-19 and measures to tackle it, bringing in some graphics to try to better communicate what this means and what we need to worry about. Today, one more graphic (an important one, I think) introducing a process to help structure thinking

I was on a fascinating Zoom check-in on this late last week, involving researchers of the Action for Empowerment and Accountability research programme (I’m on its advisory board). A4EA is focussing on Pakistan, Mozambique, Myanmar and Nigeria, but the conversation took in a few other places as well. Things that jumped out as new, or at least new angles on

Guest post by Vanita Suneja of WaterAid Covid-19 is currently   occupying our collective mind space.  Apart from avoiding mass gatherings, the foremost message given through public media and health advisories across the world is on hand hygiene. We are being been advised to clean our hands regularly and thoroughly with soap and water or with alcohol-based sanitizer. Hand washing is

The first outputs are now appearing from ‘Governance Diaries’, a really fascinating new research method that emerged from an initial conversation in a bar in Yangon 4 years ago. If you’re even slightly interested in research, please take a look at this first paper on the emerging methodology, by Miguel Loureiro, Anuradha Joshi, Katrina Barnes and Egídio Chaimite. What are

Some interesting research on the realities of CSOs in the Global South and their interaction with the aid sector is coming out of the Netherlands (see last week’s post for more on this theme). Check out this new paper by the ‘Civil Society Research Collective’ – Margit van Wessel, Suparana Katyaini, Yogesh Mishra, Farhat Naz, B. Rajeshwari, Rita Manchanda, Reetika