Sustaining and innovating marginalised rural livelihood pathways in development contexts

这个为期18个月的项目旨在加强和巩固英国雷丁大学（UoR）与日本东京农业大学（NODAI）和北海道大学（HU）之间的研究合作和伙伴关系。这些机构都在创新农业和社会科学研究方面享有世界一流的声誉。参与该项目的学者在了解发展中国家边缘化和依赖农业的生计方面有着共同的兴趣。通过该项目的合作过程，将开发对边缘化农村生计观点的联合批判性理解，探索英国和日本学术话语中的概念思维。通过借鉴他们自己在东南亚和非洲的研究案例，合作者试图确定实际和政策切入点，以支持这些边缘化人口，并确保通往有弹性的农村生计的途径。与支持边缘人口的途径和切入点问题相结合的是对提供这种支持的机制的理解。其中一个关键领域是通信和农村通信服务。认识到农村社区，特别是边缘化人群，有着复杂的需求，对于制定有效的战略，在不进一步边缘化的情况下支持生计至关重要。这种方法将使人们能够创新性地思考如何支持边缘化的生计，以及如何以赋权的方式参与提供信息或利用沟通。为了应对这些挑战，需要通过不同和综合的视角，在概念和方法上进行创新和洞察。这意味着通过社会科学的视角，以多学科的方式工作，反思不同的学术和实践方法。这种多样性的丰富性是我们寻求加强的英日网络的核心，通过网络和展示活动，一系列知识交流访问和写作研讨会。这笔资金提供了专门的时间来投资于发表三篇高质量的联合研究论文，并根据所产生的学习和想法向未来的研究呼吁提出申请。通过发展这种合作，我们还可以促进英国和日本社会科学研究人员之间的最佳实践和知识交流，并促进更正式的研究合作安排。

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.