Sustaining and innovating marginalised rural livelihood pathways in development contexts

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The aim of this 18 month project is to enhance and consolidate research collaboration and partnership between the University of Reading (UoR) UK and Tokyo Agriculture University (NODAI) and Hokkaido University (HU) in Japan. These institutions each have a world-class reputation in innovative agricultural and social science research. The academics involved in this project have shared interests in understanding marginalised and agriculturally-dependent livelihoods in developing contexts. Through the collaborative process of this project, joint critical understandings of perspectives on marginalised rural livelihoods will be developed, exploring conceptual thinking from within UK and Japanese academic discourse. By drawing on case studies from their own research in SE Asia and Africa, the collaborators seek to identify the practical and policy entry points to support these marginalised populations and ensure pathways to resilient rural livelihoods. In conjunction with the question of pathways and entry points to support marginalised populations is an understanding of the mechanisms by which that support takes place. One key area is communication, and rural communication services. Recognising that rural communities, particularly marginalised people, have complex needs is essential to creating effective strategies to support livelihoods without further embedding marginalisation. This approach will allow innovative reflection on how to support marginalised livelihoods, and how to engage with providing information or use communication in an empowering way. To address these challenges, conceptual and methodological innovation and insight are needed, through diverse and combined perspectives. This means working in a multidisciplinary way through a social science lens, reflecting on different academic and practical approaches. This richness through diversity is at the core of the UK-Japan network we seek to strengthen, using networking and showcase events, a series of knowledge exchange visits and writing workshops. The funding provides dedicated time to invest in delivering three high-quality joint research papers, and an application to a future research call based on the learning and ideas generated. Through developing this collaboration, we can also promote the sharing of best practice and knowledge exchange between UK and Japanese social science researchers and foster more formal research collaboration arrangements.