Equality, Diversity, Inclusion and Intersectionality Research at IGP

PROCOL UK, IGP’s collaborative research project is carrying out fundamental work in the East London area, looking at inequalities. For example, the Co-Lab’s longitudinal study explores class and social positioning in the context of urban regeneration and identifies gender inequalities as a key issue within their data. In a similar vein, Dr Saffron Woodcraft, who leads PROCOL UK, recently co-published a working paper called Ethnicity and Prosperity in East London: How Racial Inequalities Impact Experiences of the Good Life. The paper explores London Prosperity Index survey data, focusing on ethnicity to highlight preliminary findings concerning on the relation between racial inequality and prosperity.

IGP is currently creating a working paper, led by Prof Henrietta Moore, our Institute Director, and Eva Coulibaly-Wallis, that adopts the Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu as a central framework through which to evaluate social care and protection models.

As an epistemology that understands the essence of humanity to be inherently relational and communitarian, Ubuntu continues to shape practices of care, decision-making and land-tenure in grassroots ways in African communities that foster a legacy of this transgenerational worldview. It offers a perspective on social inclusion and new ways diversity is accounted for at the community level that is also valuable to EDI approaches at IGP.

The paper will consider Ubuntu's capacity to confront globalising and colonising forces – where it has been recently applied in African nation-building efforts, financial inclusion, land-use and media practices – at a time of ongoing social and ecological crisis. Unpacking the relations that are cultivated in these encounters, we will consider Ubuntu's scope to inform a meaningful restructuring of economies and social and ecological development approaches, not only in Africa, but elsewhere.

If you are interested in learning more about this topic while we await publication of the working paper, Prof Moore, our Director, recommends Achille Mbembe’s book On the Postcolony, and Boaventura de Sousa Santos’s Epistemologies of the South, which will be relevant to the paper.

The Fieldwork in the Global South series explores some of the complexities involved in conducting fieldwork-based research in the Global South, approached from the perspective of native scholars – scholars whose expertise aligns with the geography they grew up in – and the unique methodological, ethical, and institutional challenges they often face in their home regions.

Across a range of different research settings, including Pakistan, Palestine, Turkey, and Iran, authors from the IGP’s Takhayyul Project reflect on their experiences navigating institutional bureaucracies, overcoming language and translation barriers, and balancing academic obligations with the demands of local political sensitivities, personal safety concerns, and moral responsibilities to their communities

From these authors’ experiences, the case is also made for new frameworks to better understand fieldwork methodology, particularly with respect to how native researchers navigate their multiple positionalities and competing responsibilities in such research contexts.

In the face of a global recession, a rapidly degrading environment, and enduring inequalities widened further by COVID-19, IGP believes the 21st century requires new ways of approaching prosperity. This campaign, led by IGP, calls on policymakers to engage with the Institute’s radical new approach to create shared prosperity across the country by prioritising secure livelihoods for all post COVID-19, implementing local Universal Basic Services, creating citizen-led prosperity indices, and by bringing people (not just politicians and academics) into policy-making and innovation, based on local needs and priorities. You can view the 2022 report, created by the IGP, here.

Dr Sender’s research focuses on urban change, health, and inequalities in Lebanon and the UK. Previosuly in 2019, she has undertaken fieldwork in Bar Elias, Lebanon, to explore mental health in young people has been impacted by personal experiences of living in the area. You can read more about this here. She has since returned to Bar Elias to create a photo exhibition, in collaboration with young people in the area. Dr Sender’s experience, recorded here, proved to be a safe and encouraging way for young people to discuss how photography tells stories about mental health and wellbeing.