James Copestake and Emily Richards provide a comprehensive summary of the Bath Research in International Development (BRID) Fund’s immense impact on development policy and practice research based at the university.

The Centre for Development Studies (CDS) brings together staff, students and associates of the University of Bath who share a commitment to understanding and influencing global development both as an evolving set of human aspirations and as a historical process. It has a long history of research through individual scholarship, doctoral study and grant-funded research projects and partnerships.

In the fifty years since CDS was established, the field of development studies has grown and transformed itself. What has not changed – we believe – is the need for high-quality research to challenge and inform global development policies and practices. The Bath Research in International Development (BRID) Fund was launched in the summer of 2021 for an initial period of three years to help researchers linked to the University of Bath engage more effectively with development policy and practice in responding to climate change, discrimination, injustice, pandemics, and other global challenges. In its first three years of operation, it has approved
80 grants worth £177,889, in more than 15 countries, as well as supporting the research of two postdoctoral fellows. This report provides an overview of these activities under four broad headings: strengthening development organisations; research dissemination and public engagement; building development careers, and strengthening the University’s research capacity. It ends with reflections on the BRID Fund as a model for philanthropy, and possibilities for extending its activities in the future.

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