Children in conflict-affected countries (CACs) experience profound constraints on their academic learning and socioemotional well-being. Children exposed to violence and poverty come to "school" (formal or non-formal education settings) with poor executive function skills (e.g. working memory, inhibition, attention), emotional/behavioral regulation skills and social-information-processing skills.

Urban Africa: Risk and Capacity (Urban ARC) is a three year programme of research and capacity building that aims to reduce disaster risk in urban sub-Saharan Africa by breaking cycles of risk accumulation. The programme aims to do this by building a community of practice including sub-Saharan, African and international researchers and practitioners that can provide a structured assessment of risk accumulation and reduction dynamics.

Principal Investigator: Naila Kabeer. Lead Organistion: London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)

Co-investigator: Ashwini Deshpande (University of Delhi)

Amongst many development actors and public aid donors it is commonly perceived that the poor cannot escape poverty because they are credit constrained and as such cannot invest. The main reason why they are credit constrained being the lack of collaterals. Microcredit, the practice of lending small amounts of money to the poor, is heralded as a key tool in the fight against poverty in least developed countries (LDCs).

This research project addresses the overarching research question: What factors shape pathways into and out of poverty and people's experience of these, and how can policy create sustained routes out of extreme poverty in ways that can be replicated and scaled up? 

Principal Investigator: Patrick James Nolen. Lead Organistion: University of Essex

Co-investigators: Isaac Osei-Akoto (University of Ghana) and Edoardo Masset (Institute of Development Studies)

Global poverty looks radically different in the 21st century as climate-related events, political-religious conflicts and economic growth-inequality nexuses add to persistent forms of social exclusion based on gender, race, and class.

Important development programmes such as microfinance often do not reach the very poorest households. A new set of initiatives, called Graduation programmes, have targeted these very poor households. Their objective is to graduate them out of poverty in a sustainable manner and make them resilient so they do not fall back into poverty.