The Centre for Society, Environment and Development (CSED) within NRI facilitates social-scientific and interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary research and knowledge exchange on key social, environmental and development issues. This includes increasing understanding, engagement and the co-generation of knowledge on:

• the impacts of climate change on the rural poor, their opportunities for adaptation, and what fair climate change policies would look like;
• gender and intersectional inequalities, including gender based violence; institutions and women’s representation; social reproduction; social movements and resistance, norms and transformative change; 
• processes of innovation and learning within smallholder agriculture systems so as to sustainably improve food security and livelihood security and support more equitable outcomes.
• state fragility and conflict in the Global South and their causal linkages to climate vulnerability, environmental degradation, and food insecurity;
• political ecology, relational and arts perspectives on social and ecological justice.

CSED coordinates and communicates the world-leading research done by NRI social scientists on critical challenges facing people and environments around the world, emphasising issues of inequalities and injustice in everyday life. We carry out our work through collaborative partnerships with diverse organisations and movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

We employ and seek to innovate on diverse methodologies, including quantitative, qualitative, participatory, and arts-based methods. We have a commitment to interdisciplinarity – across the social sciences and between the social sciences, the natural sciences and the humanities - and transdisciplinary approaches. The Centre also has advanced and comprehensive capacity in evaluation methods. We seek to communicate the findings of our research and shape public, academic and policy discourses and practices, with world-leading publications, and participatory and evidence-based dialogue with decision-makers. 

CSED operates as an umbrella for four Research Groups:

• Climate Change
• Innovation and Learning in Agriculture
• Gender and Social Difference
• Political Ecology, Arts and Culture

These Research Groups are not exhaustive of our research interests and experience – for example we have a very strong cluster researching state fragility and conflict – and we also work in close collaboration with NRI colleagues in other centres such as the Centre for Food Systems Research.