Next up in this series of posts from the Bukavu workshops, Francine Mudunga discusses some messy issues that face many researchers. Original post here. A researcher is, first and foremost, a human being. As such, she is a product of her society. She is defined by a particular worldview, a specific collection of values and beliefs, and a certain frame

Next up in this series of posts from the Bukavu workshops, Jérémie Mapatano Byakumbwa  discusses some messy issues that face many researchers. Original post here. In my own experience as a researcher in eastern DRC, there have been numerous occasions on which I have had to deal with explicit demands for money (or for some sort of tip) from my

There’s a lot of attention on this blog to localizing aid (increasing the power and resources in the hands of local organizations rather than white men in shorts), but what about localization of research? For the next few weeks, I am largely handing over the blog to the Bukavu Series, a set of blog posts (and now a book) written

Guest post from Ximena Echeverria Magariños and Jay Goulden, of CARE International INGOs have for many years felt the need to communicate how many people their programs reach in a year, but the numbers of people our programs “touch” doesn’t tell us anything about the difference they make in people’s lives. Increasingly, INGOs are seeking to report numbers of people

Got a gap on the blog today, so thought I’d repost this excellent piece from CGD, by Mayra Buvinic and Megan O’Donnell The rhetoric around women’s economic empowerment (WEE) in global development is finally being translated into action. Development organizations are using this objective to guide operations and exploring ways to measure impact by integrating WEE indicators into project results frameworks. But

More than 200 scientists from 66 countries have worked together to assess knowledge on just the physical science basis of climate change. Their answers were released yesterday in the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group I. The IPCC’s findings are clear, rigorous, and very concerning, but they are couched in formal, technical

Powerful piece in this week’s Economist. I’ve added links to the various pieces of research it cites ‘Seventeen months into the COVID-19 pandemic, plenty of questions about the catastrophe remain unanswered. It is still unclear how SARS-COV-2 originated, for instance. Another puzzle is why some areas have had less destructive epidemics than others. Why has Florida had fewer deaths per person from

Another intense couple of days hearing back from the 30 or so researchers in the Action for Empowerment and Accountability research consortium, as it approaches the end of its programme. I was returning after a couple of years’ absence (I did some work on adaptive management in an earlier phase) and it was great to hear where people had got

I was speaking on a UN panel on Decent Work last week, so thought I’d better catch up with the latest Oxfam report, Not in This Together, written by Anouk Franck and Art Prapha. It provides a great case study of Covid as an ‘engine of inequality’ (and of how to write a research-based advocacy report – killer facts galore,

A brilliant recent piece on the LSE Impact blog about the importance and nature of trust in ensuring that research influences policy makers got me thinking about the implications for advocacy organizations. First a slightly truncated version of the piece, then my musings. This from the LSE Impact authors: ‘Trust is often invoked as a key ingredient to establishing effective

Here’s a wrap-up piece on what I’ve learned about ‘research for impact’ from a series of interviews on the real-world influence of researchers at the LSE Centre for Public Authority and International Development. This piece was first posted on the LSE Africa blog. Being asked to write impact case studies for the research programme at the Centre for Public Authority and International Development (full

Had an interesting exchange recently during a launch webinar for the new IDS report, Navigating Civic Space in a Time of Covid. The headline finding is: ‘The pandemic brought the suspension of many fundamental freedoms in the name of the public good, providing cover for a deepening of authoritarian tendencies but also spurring widespread civic activism on issues suddenly all