Past projects

Research that reshapes how stories are told

A selection of studies and teaching that inform the Charity Advertising project, from live fundraising experiments to listening to aid-receiving communities.

Who Owns the Story

In partnership with Amref Health Africa and Jess Crombie, the Who Owns the Story study saw two appeal packs go head to head with supporters. It was the first time live financial responses to fundraising campaigns had been tested by a charity.

Two appeal packs were sent to about 1,800 people on Amref UK’s supporter database. The first was created by Patrick Malachi, a community health worker in Nairobi, Kenya, who controlled every editorial decision, took and selected the images, and told the story in his own words. The second was created by Amref with a professional photographer and told in the voice of the INGO.

Radi-Aid Research

Radi-Aid Research is a collaboration between the Norwegian Students’ and Academics’ International Assistance Fund (SAIH) and the School of International Development at the University of East Anglia.

We talked to 74 respondents across six African countries to understand what people in aid-receiving communities think about aid communication.

Read the Radi-Aid report →

Why Media Matters for Global Development

This four-week course shows the ways international development is conceptualised, imagined and communicated as an area of study. Students decipher how these understandings affect people living in different parts of the world, and how the media can shape, address and enhance key debates.

Through a range of case studies, including in Kenya’s capital Nairobi, students discover the integral role of media and communication in development processes and social change, addressing ideas about media representations of development, community media, participatory media, public media and social media within international development campaigns.

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See the current research

The newspaper, direct mail and AI studies build on this work. Read the latest reports.

Read the research →