Affiliated projects
Joined-up research
STEPS has a number of affiliated research projects, programmes and activities that have significant links with, or overlaps with, at least one STEPS theme and one domain, whether or not the STEPS Centre directly contributes funding to the activity from its ESRC grant. The aim of having affiliated projects is to make the most of synergies that exist between STEPS and related projects. STEPS itself is also an affiliated partner of other research projects that link to our work.
Avian 'flu: the politics and policy processes of a global response
The potential of human-human transmission of virulent influenza derived from an avian flu viral strain has raised alarm bells and boosted investment in developing surveillance and response systems. But how effective are these responses? And who are the likely winners and losers?
The objective of this research project is to investigate the politics of policy processes surrounding the response to Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI), identifying key actors and networks and associated narratives and practices of policy and developing a fresh and critical reflection on the current response to the HPAI challenge.
Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS)
The total elimination of open defecation holds promise of major gains in enhancing the wellbeing of women, children and men and in achieving the Millennium Development Goals.
CLTS is a participatory approach that started in Bangladesh and has been spread to varying degrees in India, Cambodia, Indonesia, China, Nepal and has been trialled in some African countries. In a CLTS process, facilitators encourage communities to carry out their own appraisal and analysis of community sanitation, aiming to make a difference by reducing the deprivation and enhancing the wellbeing of poor people
Demos Atlas of Ideas 2.0
The Atlas of Ideas is mapping changes in the global geography of science and innovation. Its first phase ran from 2005 to 2007, and was described by the Financial Times as 'the most comprehensive assessment so far of emerging innovation in China, India and South Korea'.
A second phase gets underway in January 2008, and will include a fresh wave of projects on science and innovation in Brazil, Africa and the Islamic world, as well as more work on China and India. Atlas of Ideas 2.0 will provide an indispensable guide to the hottest places, the brightest ideas and the most inspiring innovators on the planet. It will pinpoint where innovation is coming from and predict where it is heading. And it will help nations, regions, companies and universities to navigate emerging global networks.
The STEPS Centre is a research partner for the Atlas of Ideas 2.0.
Future Health Systems Future Health Systems is a five-year project, running until September 2010, involving partners in China, India, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Uganda, the UK and the US. Its purpose is to contribute to effective strategies for improving access to appropriate health services by the poor in contexts of rapid institutional, economic and demographic change. It argues that national and international commitments of substantial additional resources for health constitute a major opportunity for improvement but that success in translating it into major benefits for the poor depends on a willingness to explore new approaches appropriate to contexts of pluralistic health systems. It is divided into three themes:
• health and social protection, which is particularly relevant to the dynamics theme of STEPS
• approaches for improving the performance of public and private health care providers, relevant to the governance theme
• policy processes and institutional development, relevant to governance and designs
Future Agricultures ConsortiumThe Future Agricultures Consortium aims to encourage critical debate and policy dialogue on the future of agriculture in Africa. The Consortium is a partnership between research-based organisations in Africa and the UK, with work currently focusing on Ethiopia, Kenya and Malawi. Through stakeholder-led policy dialogues on future scenarios for agriculture, informed by detailed field research, the Consortium aims to elaborate the practical and policy challenges of establishing and sustaining pro-poor agricultural growth in Africa.
Current work focuses on three core themes:
1. Policy processes: what political, organisational budgetary processes promote or hinder pathways to pro-poor, agriculture-led growth? What role should different actors, including Ministries of Agriculture, have in this?
2. Growth and social protection: what are the trade-offs and complementarities between growth and social protection objectives?
3. Agricultural commercialisations: what types of commercialisation of agriculture both promote growth and reduce poverty? What institutional and market arrangements are required?
A fourth theme on science, technology and innovation in African agriculture is planned for 2008, when a new three-year phase of the Consortium is due to begin with support from the UK Department for International Development (DFID).
Development and HIV at the Institute of Development Studies
A new programme on Development and HIV at IDS, centres on questions of the dynamic inter-action of resilience and vulnerability between individual biological and gendered human beings and in inter-relation to the virus itself. Sensitive to the stages of the causal pathway of HIV and AIDS, we relate current and fundamental issues and questions in social and economic development to responses to HIV or AIDS in primary prevention, care and treatment as well as impact mitigation, organised uder three themes:
1. Vulnerability, resilience and epidemic risks related to gender, identity and rights
2. Resilience from living with HIV and AIDS, bio-citicenship and the policy process
3. Adjusting to the impacts of AIDS in social protection and development policy
As changes brought by the virus are often better characterised as extended phases of stress – or as entire ‘shifts’ in existential and ecological conditions with deeply embedded long-term implications – for individuals, families and communities, we aim to link with STEPS to identify dynamic pathways across spheres and disciplines to raise new questions for improved inter-sectoral and international cooperation and integration.
Key Contact: Jerker Edstrom
Realising Rights
Realising Rights is a five-year project, running until September 2010, involving partners in Bangladesh, Kenya, Ghana, the UK and the US. Its purpose is to address the factors underlying the persistent low priority given to sexual and reproductive heath and rights in policy and practice. Its theme that is most relevant to STEPS is:
• contextualising and operationalising rights at national and local levels which is relevant to the governance theme.
POVILL
POVILL is a four-year project, running until October 2009, involving partners in China, Cambodia, Laos, Belgium, Sweden and the UK. Its purpose is to contribute to the formulation and implementation of policies to help households cope with major illness. It is divided into four sub-studies:
• substantial household surveys on how different types of household cope with different kinds of illnesses and on the impact of government health safety nets
• study of schemes to help households cope with major illness
• study of provider behaviour, including prescription of drugs
• study of policy processes
This project is particularly relevant to the dynamics theme of STEPS in its critique of oversimplified understandings of “catastrophic illness” and its exploration of policy options that take a more complex understanding into account. Its study of health finance schemes and of policy processes is relevant to STEPS' governance and design themes.
TERESA (Types of interaction between environment, rural economy, society and agriculture in European regions)
TERESA is a rural development research project co-funded under the 6th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development and conducted by 12 research institutions from all over Europe, including SPRU, the co-host of the STEPS Centre.
Rural development policy and the new CAP increasingly place agriculture in a wider context taking into account the diversification of rural economy, the quality of the environment and food safety to gain higher competitiveness of the farming sector. Combining expertise in agricultural sciences and regional policies TERESA aims to shed light on these interrelations and the impact of policies on it.
Veterinary Science, Transboundary Animal Diseases and Markets
Focusing on the case of foot and mouth disease (FMD) in southern Africa – and specifically Botswana, Nambia, South Africa and Zimbabwe – this research is exploring the economic, social and political trade-offs arising from disease control strategies geared towards promoting commercial beef exports and achieving a ‘livestock revolution’.
The project explores whether, given limited resources and capacities and the growing costs of meeting export standards, it makes sense to persist with the economically and politically fragile status quo and ensure disease freedom. Or are there other alternatives that benefit a wider group of producers, are easier to implement yet maintain access to important export markets and so foreign exchange revenues?
