Through multidisciplinary research and policy engagement we bring new understanding and action on critical issues around health and health systems, and how they overlap with other systems such as food, as well as nutrition, sanitation, epidemics and zoonotic diseases. Enhancing understanding of how to ensure healthy lives for all is a vital part of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (Agenda 2030) and has been an integral focus of IDS’ work since its inception.
Our research and analysis on innovations in health services and systems – including work on identifying effective strategies to address the challenges of antimicrobial resistance – is accelerating progress towards achieving universal health coverage in Asia and Africa. Our work on nutrition spans the spectrum from dietary transition and globalisation of food systems, through to responding to the ways that marginalisation and inequity drive high child malnutrition rates. We bring vital social knowledge to aid effective preparedness and response on pandemics. We show how direct impacts on the spread of diseases such as Ebola can be achieved by bringing learning from research on social issues and contexts to the right people in the right organisations at the right time. Together with our global partners, we are generating and sharing new knowledge and evidence to identify the underlying causes of poor health and social inequalities, and the progressive policies and practices that can help bring about transformative change.
Each year, the Kenyan government tables a finance bill outlining measures for funding the national budget. In the past, these bills have scarcely attracted public attention. This changed dramatically in 2023, with President William Ruto’s first budget following his election victory the year...
IDS researchers are among those receiving new funding grants under two UK initiatives to foster innovative and international social science collaborations.
Dr Shilpi Srivastava, a research fellow at IDS, is one of 68 of the most promising research leaders to be funded under the latest...
Widespread separation from the land combined with deep inequalities may give rise to novel forms of land governance, but with contradictions and contestations.
From Wales to Delhi, Kenya to Mexico, farmers have been fiercely protesting challenges to their livelihoods in recent years....
Hunger, poverty and inequality are not only pervasive global development challenges but also urgent issues within the UK, where an estimated eight million struggle daily with economic hardship and food insecurity, and the richest 10 percent hold 43 percent of all wealth. Urgent action is needed,...
Amid socially and ecologically failing food systems, land commoning has been proposed as a pathway to align food systems with agroecology and food sovereignty. This article aims to contribute to nascent understandings of land commoning movements in relatively deagrarianized contexts by...
Mina Chiang studied for an MA in Development Studies in 2017, with a scholarship from Rotary International in her home country, Taiwan. She has since founded the Humanity Research Consultancy (HRC), an award-winning social enterprise that works to end modern slavery and human trafficking.
In...
Following last year’s historic vote supporting the establishment of a new UN Framework Tax Convention, a UN Ad Hoc Group has now been convened and a zero draft terms of reference (TOR) for a future UN Framework Tax Convention has been published. An amended version of the TOR is set to be...
IDS has been working with partners in Ghana in recent years as part of two initiatives: firstly, a tripartite Memorandum of Understanding between the University of Sussex and the University of Ghana (UG), and secondly the IDS Ghana Development Hub, a networking and engagement platform where...
This seminar critically reflects on the praxis of children’s participation in a five-year programme tackling the worst forms of child labour in Nepal and Bangladesh. Posed as a conversation between theory and practice, the speakers share what they had to learn (and unlearn) to work effectively...
This brief presents social and political considerations for the design and implementation of vaccination-related risk communication and community engagement (RCCE) strategies for mpox in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
CLARISSA responded to the complex challenge of child labour through a deliberate and participatory approach to adaptive management. But what does it really mean to implement such an approach in practice? And what evidence do we have of how it worked? In this webinar we will reflect on our...
Critical accountants study how accounting shapes organisations and the social world. They aim to bring alternative accounts into focus. This parallels radical aspirations in development studies to empower countervailing voices in the economic sphere. Yet little dialogue exists between these...
10 July 2024
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).