Institute of Development Studies

The Institute of Development Studies (IDS) is an independent research charity that is based at the University of Sussex in the UK. Created in 1965, it was one of the first global centres for work on international development. IDS positions itself as neither an academic organization nor a think tank but a multi-stranded organization that lies at the interface between scholarly thinking, practice and policy development, teaching and knowledge production.

Action research within IDS has its roots in the work of Robert Chambers, who continues to work on the Participation Power and Social Change team. Chambers was one of the pioneers of participatory international development, developing methodologies such as rapid rural appraisal and Participatory Rural Appraisal—approaches which have much in common with action research. His more recent work on community-led total sanitation has used Action Learning as an underpinning.

Over the years, IDS has built innovative action research programmes using a range of different methods. Examples include reflective practice and power analysis with NGOs (Jethro Pettit); action research programmes with young pastoralists (Patta Scott Villiers); action research using visual methods, including both Digital Storytelling and participatory video (Joanna Wheeler and Tessa Lewin); systemic action research (Danny Burns) and action research on climate change with community radio stations (Blane Harvey).

Another major foundation stone of action research at IDS was the ‘capacity collective’. Initiated in 2007 by Peter Taylor and developed by Peter Clarke and Katy Oswald, it brought together a group of practitioners to develop five action research initiatives in Nicaragua, Ecuador and Peru. These explored how Participatory Action Research could support processes of organizational and community capacity development and led to a series of publications, including ‘Reflecting Collectively on Capacities for Change’, in the IDS Bulletin in 2010. The lessons from the capacity collective have since been used in work with several other organizations that are undertaking action research to support processes of capacity development and learning. This has included work with SNV (The Netherlands Development Organisation) on systemic change, Care on Governance, the World Food Programme on gender mainstreaming and VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas) on the impact of volunteering on poverty.

Long-term links to influential thinkers and practitioners such as Rajesh Tandon, the director of PRIA (Participatory Research in Asia) and a board member of IDS, illustrate the network connections between the wider participatory research movement and the action research process.

IDS runs a master’s programme in participation, power and social change. This is structured around a core piece of action research and is underpinned by training on research methods in action research. Action research offers a way of looking at the world and a set of tools which are congruent with a participatory world view, thus the imperative to embed it into the methodological fabric of the pedagogy. IDS also supports a growing number of action research Ph.D.s.

See alsoCollaborative Developmental Action Inquiry; Community-Based Participatory Research; systemic action research