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.
Protests are a feature of both democratic and non-democratic regimes. However, protests in non-democratic regimes have received insufficient academic attention. The nature of protest grievances, strategies, and tactics have been little studied in authoritarian and hybrid regimes. Additionally,...
In 2021, as the world was facing COVID lockdowns, anxieties and isolation, a group of us from varied learning and evaluation backgrounds—academics, practitioners, peacebuilders—connected with each other.
Our lives and work spanned different corners of the globe: Mali, South Sudan, Colombia,...
At an election rally in Rajasthan on 22 April 2024, India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, called for people not to vote for the chief opposition party, known as the Congress, claiming that they would distribute the nation’s wealth amongst “infiltrators'' - the ones “who have too many...
This second report from the XCEPT action research project, Promoting Peaceful Pastoralism, outlines what the pastoralist researchers on the Uganda/Kenya border have learned since the first report was published in October 2023. As with the first report, it presents the pastoralist communities’...
Our food system is broken, and our food value chains – comprising those people, institutions, and businesses that bring food from farm to table – are part of the problem. Our food system fails to provide stable and resilient sources of livelihoods for marginalised people, eradicate hunger,...
The Food Equity Centre and the People Centered Food Systems project are curating a set of webinars in 2024 on the topic of human rights for equitable food systems. The big question for the webinar series is: How do rights move us forward in achieving equitable food systems?
Our first talk...
In an era of hashtag campaigns and online organising, politicians and corporations are spending billions to disrupt dialogue and drown-out dissent online across Africa. Join this event to discuss these issues and more, explored in the new book Digital Disinformation in Africa: Hashtag Politics,...
Many countries around the world introduced new social protection measures in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. In Bangladesh, innovations included emergency schemes such as cash support for informal workers and digital methods of delivery. However, for many people, the government safety net...
The ICTD hosted on April 17, 2024 a webinar on ‘Getting Targets Right – How much tax can low-income countries raise?’ with a panel of researchers and practitioners to discuss whether optimistic tax targets are helpful or hurtful and how to make them better.
The Geita region in Tanzania is rich in gold deposits, which have attracted a lot of small-scale (and a few large) mining companies. In the past, the relationship between mining companies and local communities was negative due to allegations of irresponsible and unethical actions by these...
In an unprecedented year for elections in Africa, the increasing use of digital disinformation poses a rising threat to democracy across the continent, researchers warn.
New evidence shows that politicians have been undertaking increasingly sophisticated digital disinformation campaigns....
26 April 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).