Call for Proposals: Peace & Recovery Initiative

Focus Areas

• The initiative is focused on prevention, mitigation, responses to, and recovery strategies for most forms of social and political violence as well as humanitarian emergencies. This includes projects taking place in the context of:
  • International conflicts and civil wars
  • State-supported violence and repression, from mass killings to police brutality
  • Violent and nonviolent collective action, including riots, protests, and strikes
  • Intergroup violence, including ethnic and sectarian violence
  • Organized crime
  • Terrorism and violent extremism
  • “Recovery” responses after violence or destruction from conflict, climate shocks, and other natural disasters.

Areas of Research

• Understanding and preventing individual-level participation in violence: A range of factors may lead someone to participate in violence or collective action. Questions could include:
  • How can interventions address the material and nonmaterial incentives that contribute to participation in crime and violence? This could include research on:
    • Psychological factors and behavioral motivations
    • Feelings of exclusion and marginalization
  • What “violence vaccines” can help prevent violence among the highest-risk demographics? What kinds of interventions can disrupt cycles of violence and reduce participation in violence in later life? Interventions could include:
    • Psychotherapy and behavior change interventions, such as cognitive behavioral therapy
    • Social-emotional skills development in children
    • Can social media and other technology be adapted or leveraged to prevent recruitment or encourage disengagement?
    • What are effective ways of reintegrating violent offenders, members of armed groups, and/or former prisoners into society and preventing recidivism?
• Understanding, combating, and reintegrating non-state armed groups: Internal armed conflicts involving non-state armed groups have emerged as both the most common form of armed conflict and the leading driver in the rise of violent armed conflict globally. Questions could include:
  • What are the determinants for participating in armed groups (e.g. ideology, religion, economic motivations, etc.)?
  • How do armed groups govern, finance, radicalize, and recruit, and how can they be countered?
  • How can armed groups’ economic returns to crime, violence, and conflict be interrupted or reduced?
• Reducing prejudice and building horizontal social cohesion: Reducing prejudice and building social cohesion across religious, ethnic, and cultural divides is assumed to be key to preventing violence, creating pro-social norms, treating exposure to conflict, and building inclusive societies. Questions could include:
  • What is the role of local civil society organizations and grassroots movements in promoting social cohesion and building peace?
  • What are the specific mechanisms through which intergroup contact interventions can influence social integration, attitudes, and behaviors between groups?
• Strengthening household and community resilience: A core goal of many programs in fragile settings is to ensure that households and communities can weather future conflict, climate, and other negative shocks. Questions could include:
  • How can early warning efforts inform response and the pre-positioning of aid? Can well-timed response and pre-positioning reduce future conflict, famine, and other crises?
  • What is the impact of building community resilience to negative shocks, including climate shocks, on reducing local disputes?
• Building institutions, resolving disputes, and delivering justice: Building and strengthening both formal and informal institutions that can provide services, resolve disputes, deliver justice, and establish social order is important to building stability and peace. Questions could include:
  • How can interventions strengthen the perceived legitimacy of the state to respond to crime, violence, and conflict? How can the capacity of the state to respond to these challenges be strengthened?
  • What interventions improve trust in state institutions? Are institutions that are more inclusive of women and minorities perceived as more trustworthy, accountable, or legitimate?
• Addressing root causes and preventing future crises: A fundamental concern of policymakers and practitioners working in crisis-affected contexts is how to predict and prevent future conflict and humanitarian crises. Questions include:
  • How can early warning signs of violence, armed conflict, climate shocks, and humanitarian crises be identified?
  • In countries at high risk of climate hazards or natural disasters, how can the climate-related drivers of conflict be addressed, and how can interventions overcome the conflict-related barriers to climate adaptation?
• Measurement and Design: Given the vulnerability of crisis-affected populations, the limited impact evaluation research, and the challenges of doing research in crisis-affected contexts, thoughtful research design and measurement are necessary when researching the above topic areas. To that end, they encourage research teams to consider the following when designing impact evaluations and/or “infrastructure and public goods” studies:
  • How can the many challenges associated with identifying and surveying vulnerable populations be overcome?
  • For displaced populations, what are the demographics of individuals or households who move in given settings, and how does this impact program targeting?

Types of Grants

• Exploratory grants: These grants are to develop preliminary research ideas, contributing to the development of proposals for pilots or full impact evaluations in future rounds. Activities may include travel, relationship development, descriptive or observational analysis, and data development or collection.
• Pilot studies: These grants are intended to lay the groundwork for future impact evaluations. They are for studies with clear research questions, identified interventions, and established partnerships, but which require substantial upfront investments in design, measurement, and/or implementation before a full impact evaluation can be designed and a full study proposal can be submitted.
• Full studies: These grants are for impact evaluations that assess the causal effects of an intervention, program, or policy.
• Infrastructure and public goods creation: These grants are for the creation of data or tools that can support several research projects or types of analyses, often ultimately supporting the design or implementation of future impact evaluations.
• Evidence use and policy outreach support: These grants are for supporting the development of relationships with policymakers, take-up and dissemination of evidence, sharing and analysis of administrative data, and exploration of potential impact evaluations.

Funding Information

• Exploratory grants: Maximum award: $10,000
• Pilot studies: Maximum award: $75,000
• Full studies: Maximum award: $500,000
• Infrastructure and public goods creation: Maximum award: $250,000
• Evidence use and policy outreach support: Maximum award: $25,000

Eligibility Criteria

• At least one researcher per project must be primarily affiliated with a university (e.g. PhD Candidate, Assistant Professor, Professor, etc.), and either hold a PhD or be currently pursuing a PhD in a relevant discipline.
• The research team must demonstrate experience conducting field research and applying impact evaluation methods in sectors that are relevant to the Peace & Recovery Initiative.
• Projects may include additional researchers that do not meet these requirements.
• Exploratory grants are earmarked for LMIC-based researchers, junior faculty, PhD students and candidates, and other researchers who do not have significant sources of funding for travel and exploratory work.

For more information, visit Innovations for Poverty Action.