Our research aims to provide understanding as well as recommendations for effective policies in development. We seek to contribute to more effective policies for the full integration of women in all spheres of local and international development, encompassing socio-political, economic, cultural and religious aspects of women’s lives. Members have undertaken commissioned research for government agencies and advised NGOs at home and overseas. Our research has covered a wide array of all aspects of topics within gender studies, theoretical and practical, within the context of African, Asian, European and Chinese Studies.

Research programmes awaiting funding:

• Women and Faith-Based Development:

Recent geo-political events have placed religious issues centre stage. This research project applies women-centred perspectives to examine the intersection between faith-based development organizations, donor recipients and gender justice.
Duration: Three-year project
Budget: c. £500,000 including: staffing, fieldwork and dissemination
Locations: China, India, Korea, Nigeria

• Health and Well-being in the Caucasus Region:

Stress experienced during the post-Soviet era has profoundly affected well-being, noted in the life expectancy for men being 67 years and Healthy Life Expectancy 10 years lower than Western European countries. There is a growing need to identify the health and social needs of urban and rural populations emerging from the former Soviet Union era. 
Proposed duration of project: Two-year project
Budget: c. £350,000 including: staffing, fieldwork and dissemination

• Recovery of women’s cultural traditions in Muslim Diaspora:

The starting point is the richness of Muslim women’s oral traditions in China, with the project to be extended to other diaspora communities. To salvage precious traditions of worship is the more urgent because an ever-diminishing number of women remember the songs and stories taught to them when young.
Duration: Three-year project
Budget: c. £500,000 including: staffing, fieldwork and dissemination
Locations:  China, India, Korea, Tanzania, Cameroon

• Comparative Creolization: Gender Roles, Marital Strategies and Family Welfare Outcomes in Creole Societies:

This research project seeks to go beyond the dichotomy between ‘multi-culturalism’ and ‘social integration’, to delve into how the process of cultural interaction of ethnic groups encountering one another inevitably generates new ‘Creole’ cultures. These at present are developing in an ad hoc fashion, rather than being consciously debated and planned for. Tracing the gender, ethnicity and marital strategies of Creole cultures to the present sheds light on work patterns, social interaction, political stability and material welfare of rural and urban populations in developing countries, providing better understanding of global migration and the integrative social, cultural and language processes of evolving hybrid societies today.
Duration: Four-year project
Budget: c. £600,000 including: staffing fieldwork and dissemination
Locations: English & Dutch-speaking West Indian islands, Swahili East Africa