Covid-19 has had profound impact on low- and middle-income countries. As they try to reverse these losses, governments, civil society, and international organisations urgently need good research to guide decisions and make the best possible use of shrinking budgets. Research relevance and quality is necessary but not always sufficient - close engagement with would-be users and conscious attention to how findings and recommendations are framed and communicated is required.
News and Views
Posted: 20th May
Pauline Rose and Elizabeth Tofaris reflect on the Impact Initiative programme and what can be learned from six years of facilitating impact-focused research in global development.
Posted: 29th March
Now is the time to make a case for a collectivised, programme level approach to knowledge brokering and impact. The increasing calls for policy to “follow the science”, pressures created by ODA cuts and the urgent requirement to demonstrate the value of research, make for the perfect opportunity to secure approaches to connecting research with policy that value wider bodies of knowledge and broader definitions of impact.
Posted: 24th February
Funders are urged to take a new approach to engaging evidence with policy that values collaborations and learning. This synthesis work demonstrates the need to look across projects, not just within.
Posted: 10th February
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Exploring a new model that draws on on ESRC-FCDO RLO research to provide an intervention to help teachers improve their teaching practices.
Posted: 23rd November
Reported outcomes ‘harvested’ from across the Raising Learning Outcomes Programme to build a picture of the diverse processes and pathways to impact across the portfolio have been presented at an Impact Initiative hosted webinar on ‘Celebrating the Successes and lessons of the Raising Learning Outcomes Programme.’
Posted: 2nd September
Impact support services that try to build the capacity of researchers and broker knowledge between academia, policy and practice need to be built into programmes from the start. This is one of the key messages coming out of a new review commissioned by the UKRI. With the launch of the new Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), capturing learning from the ESRC-DFID Partnership could not come at a better time.
Posted: 9th July
For 15 years, the Joint Fund has commissioned high-quality research on poverty alleviation, across a broad range of topics and methodologies. With the Joint Fund now coming to an end, DFID and ESRC have commissioned an evaluation with a strong learning dimension, to identify key lessons to be passed on to current and future funds of similar scope, in particular the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF).
Posted: 16th June
The evidence community is finally taking the relational and societal aspects of getting evidence into use seriously. James Georgalakis asks if donors, researchers, elected officials and policy professionals are ready to create research-policy partnerships that can deal with these social realities. Relationships should be built on trust, an understanding of our differences and where the sweet spot for collaboration exists.
Posted: 16th June
In the wake of the global COVID-19 pandemic, researchers are faced with the challenge of adapting their plans for achieving changes in policy and practice through new evidence. A webinar hosted by the Impact Initiative set out to explore how researchers may need to think differently about impact for education policy and practice, and what kind of support they might need from funders and policy actors.