From land grab and food security to sectarian and resource conflicts, the Gender Centre at the Graduate Institute is leading the way forward for Swiss funded gender research. The DEMETER teams from Cambodia and Ghana gathered in Geneva to finalise their livelihood survey to assess the everyday impact of changes occurring in rural farming communities on the lives of women, men, girls and boys. Early findings have already revealed shifts in food cultures in both countries as well as changes in the status and roles of women who increasingly turn to waged labour to supplement household food supplies.

In a second project on the gender dimensions of conflict funded from the same r4d stream, Gender Centre researchers together with their Nigerian partners travelled to Indonesia to join local research coordinators to analyse data from an in-depth cross-country, cross-community comparative study exploring how variations in gender relations interplay with the eruption or absence of violent conflict at the micro-level. Building upon these initial findings which detail the links between gender relations and different types of violent conflicts, the second stage of the 6-year research will now turn to examining how local gendered patterns of conflict management can interlink and inform supra-local peace building initiatives.

Both of these longitudinal studies are designed to institute collaborative ties between Swiss academics and researchers in partner countries from university and NGO sectors. The vision is to support scientific research that looks to finding sustainable solutions to global problems.