Resources

On this page we list resources we are aware of that are relevant for our sector. If you are aware of a resource that may be of interest to our members, but is not included here, please send it to Mary.Ryan@glasgow.ac.uk

Online resource for collaborative indigenous research
Description: Our aim in creating the CIR Digital Garden is to promote and expand the field of Collaborative Indigenous Research. We wish to highlight the methods, ethics, theories of change, and forms of knowledge mobilization present in Collaborative Indigenous Research methodologies.

Lessons learned from ODA research funds: A synthesis report of GCRF and Newton Fund evaluations
Description: The report is a synthesis of 11 evaluation documents published before July 2022, looking at the GCRF and Newton Fund. In addition to taking stock of lessons learned from the two funds, it also provides forward-looking policy pointers to support future decision making on Official Development Assistance (ODA) research among UK development research funders.

The Africa Charter for Transformative Research Collaborations
Description: In conjunction with the AAU Biennial Conference Of Rectors, Vice Chancellors and Presidents of African Universities 2023 (COREVIP 2023), high-level representatives of major higher education (HE) and research institutes, networks, and funding and policy bodies in Africa, Europe and beyond have come together to launch a new Africa Charter for advancing transformative research collaborations between Africa and the rest of the world. The ambitious Charter Initiative, a joint endeavour of Africa’s key HE bodies, and facilitated in partnership with the University of South Africa Chief Albert Luthuli Research Chair and the University of Cape Town Institute for Humanities in Africa (HUMA), aims to redress entrenched power imbalances in global knowledge production.

Listening to the voices of early-career researchers in the Global South so that we can better support them to thrive
Description: In late 2021, INASP conducted a survey of early career researchers in the Global South. 7,972 researchers based in Africa, Asia, Latin America and elsewhere answered a total of 50 questions about their own research experience and about the research context in their country.

Becoming locally led as an anti-racist practice: a guide
Description: This draft guide has been developed in response to the growing demand from the international development sector, the UK in particular, to ensure that organisations change how they work, make decisions, and are structured and governed to become more locally led. The draft guide seeks to support international organisations of varying sizes based in higher-income countries, such as the United Kingdom, in partnership with colleagues from around the world, to shift their practice and use of power to become more locally led. Anyone within an organisation wanting to, or already driving change, from leadership positions to more junior positions can use this guide. 

Four Approaches to Supporting Equitable Research Partnerships
This Good Practice Document produced by UKCDR and ESSENCE on Health Research aims to support equity in research partnerships by assisting funders, research organizations and researchers to improve their ways of working in multi-country research consortia, particularly in relation to low- and middle- income country (LMIC) contexts.

Ethics of Health Systems Research
Description: All too often ethical reflection, review, and analysis is treated as something that occurs in elite spaces, among people higher up, behind closed doors, or in institutional review boards. Sometimes it is viewed as a one-off element in the research process that occurs before research even begins. But making ethical practice a day-to-day part of our daily routine as health systems researchers is crucial to research excellence. You don’t have to be an ethics expert to do this – although ethics expertise can contribute great advice, which we have drawn on in this resource. Our hope is that this website can be a resource for health systems researchers to find and share information to support practical, applied ethics.

Guidance to Anticipate, Mitigate and Address Harm in Research
Description: On behalf of major funders of international development research, UK Collaborative for Development Research (UKCDR) is publishing a set of principles and best practice guidance on safeguarding to anticipate, mitigate and address potential and actual harms in the process of international development research, along with a ‘companion piece’ on the practical application of this guidance during COVID-19. This new guidance has been developed over the past 18 months, in consultation with international development experts across the globe following a commitment made in 2018 by the Department for International Development, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Department of Health and Social Care, UK research and Innovation and Wellcome to jointly raise standards of behaviour across the sector.

GCRF Gender Equality Statement Toolkit
Description: A suite of material developed by the University of Edinburgh to help researcher think critically about gender in their projects and developing strong Gender Equality Statements.

Ethical Action in Global Research website
Description: This website and toolkit has been brought together by more than 200 global researchers from more than 30 countries to inform and support ethical choices in global research. This is a temporary website and they are developing a more interactive one. Please do share both these resources – UofE want to make sure they are as well used as possible. Also, they welcome any feedback from colleagues who use them. They’re very much intended to be dynamic resources so the groups who have created them are keen to enhance them.

Critical Resource for Ethical International Partnerships
Description: When we start a new project with partners in a different context, it is never truly a “new start.” Historically it has been experts from the Global North who have studied and interpreted the South. This means that international research partnerships are inevitably imbued with power relations and possibly the assumption that it is northern knowledge that will lead transformations of in the South. Without a clear recognition of that context, it is inevitable that existing inequities, injustices, and imbalances of knowledge and power, will continue to pervade our work. The Sustainable Futures in Africa team designed this resource to help make explicit the practices and dynamics that underpin partnerships, to support the development of more equitable working relations.

Critical Resource for Understanding Impact from Sustainable Futures Global
Description: Research impact has become an important concept in the Academy. Without careful and critical attention, this term can be applied in ways that risk imposing meaning upon a wide range of geographical, cultural, and disciplinary contexts. Layers of lived experience and learning can be overlooked and as such undervalued or misunderstood. Equally, assertions of impact can be imbued with assumptions that may not hold relevance outside of the dominant discourses in which they were developed. The provocations, explorations, and propositions that we present here are designed to support the development of more equitable, inclusive and sustainable approaches to research impact, particularly in international and interdisciplinary contexts.

Online Ethics Course
Description: This is a short online introductory course (freely available to all researchers) that aims to highlight some of the ethical issues that can arise with social research (specifically in health-related topics but it does have wider relevance) and possible ways of addressing them.  We hope it might be useful both to ethics committee members and researchers applying for ethics review. A certificate of completion is available once a minimum score of 80% is achieved in the final quiz section.

Five keys to improving research costing and pricing in low- and middle-income countries from ESSENCE good practice.
Description: As the requirements for access to research funding increase, the competitiveness and compliance of research organizations has to improve. In this booklet, we aim to provide clear guidelines and practical tips on improving research costing and pricing. Based on feedback obtained from users of the first edition, we have changed the order of the keys, cited some new references and added some ‘notes from the field’. These notes are drawn from responses to a survey as well as a series of consultations and focus-group meetings we conducted. In the Five Keys, we focus specifically on research costing and pricing for research institutions in LMICs and their funders. We outline some of the challenges involved in research costing and offer recommendations for addressing these. 

Seven approaches to investing in implementation research in low- and middle- income countries from ESSENCE good practice
Description: ESSENCE (Enhancing Support for Strengthening the Effectiveness of National Capacity Efforts) on Health Research is an initiative to coordinate and harmonize investments in research capacity in health in low- and middle income countries. Although the ESSENCE group focuses primarily on health research, its members hope that these approaches will be shared across other areas of research as well. In this document, we attempt to respond to questions raised by funders and researchers about how to seed and sustain IR in LMICs. Based on a literature review and an analysis of responses to a survey we conducted, as well as interviews with key informants, we highlight seven approaches for organizations to consider when investing in IR. The approaches offer some broad direction for funding organizations, research institutions and researchers. One or more case studies are included with each approach to help provide further information and inspiration from existing IR programs. A selection of training resources is also included at the end of the document.

Document - Working with Partners in the Global South
Description: This report draws on the experiences of project managers from the GCRF (Global Challenges Research Fund) Network Plus awards. It highlights key institutional challenges faced while setting up and delivering projects with multiple partners, many of which based in the global south. The operations group was set up so the project managers could troubleshoot some of the major barriers we faced and share best practice. Combined with direct input from our collaborating partners, the report outlines these learnings and develops recommendations for academics, funding councils and development agencies in order for them to think about how, despite ‘ethical’ intentions, their project management and finance systems, are often not equitable and risk inflicting unintended harm. Our aim is to address how, through arts and humanities research methods, we can approach development funding critically in order to engage in sustainable and equitable partnerships in the Global South. See attached for full report.

Document - Fieldwork and Project Risk Assessment
Description: This template is provided to allow project teams to plan, assess and record control measures that may be needed to mitigate risk during proposed project activities, including risks associated with COVID-19. Depending on the complexity of the work, it can supplement other risk assessments (such as individual institutional risk assessments) or may be used as a stand-alone document, if all relevant risks can be covered. This document is intended to be a tool to ensure appropriate discussions happen within a project team about the potential risks associated with project work and to ensure that team members undertaking work as part of a project led by the University of Glasgow understand and acknowledge both the risks involved and their responsibilities with respect to risk reduction.

UofG Safeguarding in Research
Description: For many staff and PGRs, research fieldwork feels very distant, with cancelled trips and uncertainty over future plans. For others, fieldwork continued throughout the pandemic, either by moving online or via local partners. Learning from this range of experiences and work that was already ongoing within the University in relation to research safeguarding, we have introduced guidance which we hope will help you to restart (or continue) fieldwork in a way which places researcher wellbeing front and centre. This has come at the same time as increased sector scrutiny and policy in this area (see UK Research and Innovation's Preventing harm in research) and we encourage anyone undertaking research fieldwork to take time to reflect on these changes and the increased support available.

Safety Online Platforms Guidance from Plan International
Description: This document includes guidance for staff who want to use online platforms and / or set up online groups to involve children and young people in humanitarian or development work.<

Research: Let's make it safe! Webinar Recording
Description: This webinar has offered participants the opportunity to consider what needs to be in place to make research, and programme monitoring and evaluation safe for both research participants and researchers.  It explored the specific needs when the subject of the research is particularly sensitive, in the case of researching Sexual Exploitation, Abuse and Sexual Harassment (SEAH). Our panellists have shared their practical experiences in relation to training, risk management, COVID mitigations and share examples of different methodology and tools used. Chair: Karen Walker-Simpson I Chair - Director, Funder Safeguarding Collaborative. Panellists: 

  • Philippa Tubb - Designated Safeguarding Lead at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine
  • Bintu Mansaray - Registrar, Consulting Doctor and Research Fellow – ARISE Sierra Leone
  • Alina Potts – Research Scientist, the Global Women’s Institute
  • Tala Chammas - Empowered Aid Research Officer with CARE International in Tripoli, Lebanon

Contextual communications for safeguarding Webinar Recording
Description: This webinar has addressed how to communicate safeguarding issues:
Safeguarding translation: What do we need to consider when translating safeguarding terms and messages into different languages? Visual communications on safeguarding: How can we communicate key safeguarding messages visually in ways that will be recognised and understood in different cultural contexts?

Course: Community Engagement: An Exploration
Description: A resource that dips into some of the many 'what?', 'why' and 'how?' considerations related to community engagement. The course is an invitation to staff and students across all University of Glasgow Schools and Colleges, as well as partners and communities, to explore, reflect and discuss community engagement.