On Speaking, Mediation, Representation and Listening: A think piece for the Making All Voices Count programme

This think piece focuses on ‘voice’ within the Making All Voices Count framework. It reflects on experiences, debates, assumptions, and questions about what ‘voice’ is and how it can be supported, with a particular focus on what this means for the Making All Voices Count’ programmeDFID, USAID, SIDA, Omidyar Networ

Interrogating an Engaged Excellence Approach to Research

In recent years several debates have emerged about how to make academic research more ‘engaged’. The motivation for these debates has varied from a recognition that engagement can help increase the impact of research, to normative arguments that research needs to engage with those it seeks to help or change, and epistemological arguments that the multifaceted nature of truth necessitates the engagement of multiple perspectives. This report will outline these debates, drawing out some of the emerging epistemological, normative and pragmatic arguments for what the Institute of Development Studies has now come to call ‘engaged excellence’. The main literature it will draw on comprises the following: the science–policy debates around Mode 1 and 2 research; debates within the philosophy of science; arguments for why a participatory action research approach is increasingly being used in the social sciences, health, social work and education; and debates about what it means to be an engaged university or scholar. It will also draw on some of the debates emerging from a push to decolonise academia, where those debates touch on issues of engagement and whose knowledge counts. It will then consider what these arguments mean for the four pillars of engaged excellence that we have identified at IDS – delivering high-quality research; mobilising impact-orientated evidence; co-constructing knowledge; and building enduring partnerships – while emphasising their interdependence. Within these pillars, the cross-cutting themes of ethics, and teaching and learning will also be explored.UK Department for International Developmen

The Role of Social Protection in Adapting to Climate Change

Comprehensive social protection – that aims to prevent impoverishment and protect, promote and transform livelihoods and social relations – could provide significant opportunities to help people adapt to climate change

Introduction: Interrogating Engaged Excellence in Research

Approaches to engaged research, which do not just produce academic knowledge, but link with people and groups in society, have long intellectual roots. In recent years, however, for epistemological, practical and ethical reasons, interest in such approaches has gained ground. At the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) we seek to adopt an ‘engaged excellence’ approach to research. We have identified four pillars that support engaged excellence: high-quality research; co-construction of knowledge, mobilising impact-orientated evidence; and building enduring partnerships. This introduction interrogates this approach, deepening our understanding of what it means, whilst also acknowledging the challenges which it poses. It raises questions about who defines what good quality research is; how, why and who we co-construct knowledge with; what counts as impact; and how we build enduring partnerships. It also touches on some of the implications for both researchers themselves and the institutions through which we work

Linking Community, Radio, and Action Research on Climate Change: Reflections on a Systemic Approach

This article reflects upon the opportunities and challenges of using Participatory Action Research (PAR) with community radio broadcasters in southern Ghana to investigate the impacts of climate change. Through a detailed outline of the methodological approach employed in this initiative as well as the findings that it produced, we consider how action research might serve to reveal the power relations, systemic drivers of vulnerability, and opportunities for sustainable action for social change related to climate impacts. As co?facilitators of this process based in a Northern research institution, we reflect upon the challenges, limitations and benefits of the approach used in order to identify potential areas for improvement and to understand how the dynamics of this partnership shaped collaboration. We also discuss how employing a systemic approach to action research helped to provide insights into the interactions between the physical and environmental impacts of climate change and related systems such as land tenure and agricultural production. A systemic approach to PAR, we argue, lends itself especially well to analysis of climate change adaptation and resilience, both of which are embedded within complex systems of institutions, assets, individuals and structures, and therefore not appropriate for narrow or one?dimensional analyses. Finally, we consider the specific contributions and challenges that engaging community radio as a research partner may offer to investigations on climate change

Phase One: June 2013 – September 2014

Food and nutrition security and gender equality are closely linked and mutually constitutive. The fact that women and girls are among the most undernourished in the world and are often hardest hit by food insecurity underlines this. Women’s productive labour and unpaid care work is central to the production, preparation and provision of food. Yet their ability to feed themselves and their families is persistently undermined by institutionalised gender biases in access to resources, markets, social services and social protection, as well as socio-cultural norms which prioritise the nutrition of men and boys and limit women’s decision-making power. Acknowledging this situation the WFP has, amongst other activities, entered into a learning partnership with the Institute of Development Studies (IDS). The premise for the ‘Innovations from the Field’ programme is that WFP staff and partners at the country level are often adopting innovative practices which respond to, and deal effectively with, local gender realities and priorities, but these are rarely shared. Taking a ‘bottom-up’ learning approach to gender mainstreaming will allow successful innovations to be captured, shared and embedded across the organisation. In this first phase of the programme, IDS has facilitated a process of ‘participatory action learning’ in five WFP Country Offices: Guatemala, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi and Senegal. This has enabled staff to reflect on, explore, document and share good practices for gender-sensitive food security programming. It has also allowed wider reflection on current barriers to effective gender mainstreaming in WFP and how they could be overcome. This report summarises the learning so far

Empowerment and Accountability in Difficult Settings: What Are We Learning?

Empowerment and accountability have long been part of the international development vocabulary and a core part of governance, social development and civil society programmes. Yet, much of what has been learnt about these approaches has been drawn from studies in somewhat stable, open and middle-income places around the world. Less is known about how empowerment and accountability are achieved through social and political action in more difficult settings – those faced by institutional fragility, conflict, violence, and closing civic space. This document highlights key messages emerging from the work of the Action for Empowerment and Accountability Research Programme (A4EA), and the implications for how donors, policy makers and practitioners support strategies for empowerment and accountability in fragile, conflict and violence affected settings (FCVAS). Our eight key messages have strong implications for the theories of change used for effective programming in the field

Participation in Economic Decision-Making: A Primer

This primer is designed to help programmes that aim to build participation into economic decision-making to better understand what ‘participation’ means. It focuses on what does meaningful participation in economic decision-making mean, and what might it look like? What does it mean to support people to have more control over their economic futures, and how might programmes do this? It recognises that participation can happen at three interconnected levels, with different levels of agency exercised by funders of programmes: 1) At the internal level: are programmatic processes participatory? 2) At the beneficiary level: do the organisations (grantees) funded to work with target audiences use participatory processes? 3) At the societal level: are there participatory processes within economic decision-making (e.g. government/investment decisions?) that programming can support? This primer addresses all three levels and is intended to support developing a common language and understanding around key concepts to inform programme planning and implementation. It can also be used to develop ideas for different ways to build participatory practice internally.Open Society Foundations’ (OSF) Economic Advancement Programm

A Learning Approach to Monitoring and Evaluation

This article draws on literature from both monitoring and evaluation (M&E) and organisational learning to explore synergies between these two fields in support of organisational performance. Two insights from the organisational learning literature are that organisations learn through ‘double?loop’ learning: reflecting on experience and using this to question critically underlying assumptions; and that power relations within an organisation will influence what and whose learning is valued and shared. This article identifies four incentives that can help link M&E with organisational learning: the incentive to learn why; the incentive to learn from below; the incentive to learn collaboratively; and the incentive to take risks. Two key elements are required to support these incentives: (1) establishing and promoting an ‘evaluative culture’ within an organisation; and (2) having accountability relationships where value is placed on learning ‘why’, as well as on learning from mistakes, which requires trust