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All IGP research is concerned with questions of social justice, and aims to contribute to communities and societies in which equality, diversity and inclusion are foundational principles. On this page, you will find a sample of research from the Institute for Global Prosperity, which tackles intersectional inequalities and social justice issues.
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PROCOLs
PROCOL UK
Prosperity Co-Lab (PROCOL) UK is IGP’s innovative collaboration between citizen-led and academic research, as well as multi-stakeholder partnerships with communities, government, business, and researchers, to develop transformational thinking and action on shared prosperity for the UK, led by IGP's Dr Saffron Woodcraft. Much of PROCOL UK’s work focuses on class and social inequalities. For example, the Citizen Science Academy has been designed explicitly to widen participation in research for policy and social action, via knowledge co-production. Housed in IGP, it's the first of its kind to offer university qualifications to members of the general public who undertake study there. Some of our citizen scientists go on to support delivering methods lectures at UCL. For example, Tony McKenzie and Sue Ansarie (2015/2017 citizen scientists) helped deliver walking research methods lectures in the Olympic Park. Explore zines created by our citizen scientists.
PROCOL Lebanon
Much like PROCOL UK, PROCOL Lebanon is a research collaboration between Citizen Scientists in Lebanon and the IGP. For our Lebanese Citizen Scientists, it is particularly important to developing an agenda of prosperity due to the country’s ongoing refugee crisis. Addressing these challenges through the lens of prosperity increases the potential of future economic development and growth in Lebanon. If you are interested in learning more about what participatory research between citizens and universities offers, you can read Dr Nikolay Mintchev of the IGP’s paper, written in collaboration with the PROCOL Lebanon Citizen Scientists about Sustained Citizen Science from Research to Solutions: A New Impact Model for the Social Sciences here.
PROCOL Africa
IGP’s third Prosperity Co-Lab is PROCOL Africa. The innovative collaborative research programme seeks to broaden the discussion of what constitutes prosperity in Africa. In collaboration with the IGP, the programme sources local knowledge, science, and policy development to democratise research in the area via the use of participatory citizen science. Our PROCOL Africa project aims to redefine what prosperity means in the continent. In collaboration with the IGP, local partners work to develop policy and research tailored to communities across Africa. For example, you can see our working paper, Pathways to the ‘Good Life’: Co-Producing Prosperity Research in Informal Settlements in Tanzania, with a translation in Swahili here. If you would like to see more about some of PROCOL Africa’s upcoming projects, you can do so here.
Ongoing projects
- PROCOL UK Longitudinal Study
PROCOL UK, the 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.
- Working Paper on Ubuntu, a South African philosophy
The 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 the 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.
Research Output
- The Rebuilding Prosperity Campaign
In the face of a global recession, a rapidly degrading environment, and enduring inequalities widened further by COVID-19, the IGP believes the 21st century requires new ways of approaching prosperity. This campaign, led by the 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.
- Mental Health in Young People in Lebanon
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.
