Dr.Kristie Drucza, Dr.Mohsin Hafeez, Dr.Almah Tararia, Kanwal Waqar, Monal Bhattarai An enumerator arrives in a village at noon, clipboard in hand. He knocks, asks for the head of household, and a man steps forward. Twenty minutes later the survey is complete, the box is ticked, and the data is “disaggregated by sex.” But the woman […]
Kristie Drucza A donor puts out a call for proposals. It covers sample sizes, deadlines, reporting templates, and a budget line for “data collection.” What it does not mention is who owns the data once it is collected, who decides how it is stored, or whether the community has any way to withdraw or correct […]
Kristie Drucza In the first post in this series, I argued that when a contract says nothing about data sovereignty, silence is not neutral. A firm that notices the gap and says nothing has made a choice, even if no one asked it to. But naming the problem is the easy part. The harder question, […]
Melissa Langworthy The Tool No One Reviewed Picture a common scene in development research. A team based at a Northern university is conducting a multi-country study on women’s economic inclusion in East Africa. The study is IRB-approved. Consent forms have been translated. Field facilitators have been trained. The researchers are experienced and well-intentioned. Partway through, […]
Dr Kristie Drucza We often do not think about role models in international development work. Role models are often treated as soft extras, something nice to have alongside the “real” work of services, incentives, infrastructure or policy. The evidence suggests otherwise. Exposure to people who embody a different future can shift aspirations, educational effort, gender […]
Dr Kristie Drucza Seven years into Includovate, and this does not feel like a moment for a glossy celebration. I feel proud of our team and our work, and at the same time, I see how stubborn some forms of exclusion are. We began Includovate with a clear belief: development is more honest and more […]
Melissa Langworthy Introduction Why development research must move beyond GDP-think — and how solidarity economies are already showing the way In 1944, the economist Karl Polanyi warned that a market economy unchecked by social purpose would ultimately devour the society that created it. Eight decades later, amid cascading climate disruption, rising inequality, geopolitical fragmentation, and […]
Andrea Mrazova Introduction I have been questioning how mainstream research methods, as promoted by Western or Global North institutions, align with or serve the needs of Indigenous populations. One of the organisations active in the field is Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety Limited (ANROWS) The work of this organisation inspired me to think […]
Dr. Kristie Drucza and Kate Learmonth Anti‑gender movements are reshaping policy environments in ways that directly affect the impact and sustainability of donor investments in sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) (Corredor 2019; IPPF 2024). Yet work from Latin America, Europe and the Asia Pacific shows that with the right strategies, funders can still […]
Dr. Kristie Drucza Allies And Accomplices In International Development International development feels different now. For many of us, the last few years have been bruising. The era of expansive US development funding is over, and nothing has neatly replaced it. Long‑promised commitments to localisation and decolonisation still jostle with shrinking budgets, securitised agendas and culture‑war […]
