For Andréanne Martel, research and the work she carried out at IDRC as a 2016 Research Award recipient are inseparable. Martel sought to understand if and how a project to provide access to justice for victims of sexual violence in Mumbai had endured and been replicated. But, she says, “my focus was not on the research project itself. It was more on what research I could do to influence IDRC’s work.”

“It was the first time I was doing this kind of oriented research to help an organization better understand how they are bringing impact to scale,” says Martel. Success in the project, she discovered, was due in large part to the team’s ability “to coordinate with plenty of organizations in the society, and with the state stakeholders,” she says.

Embedded in IDRC’s evaluation team, she collaborated in a study to help the Centre and its donor partners better design projects so that impacts could reach the greatest number of people. This enabled her to work “on really corporate issues for IDRC” she says. “This is what I really wanted to do, to understand the bigger picture.”

Philanthropy is on the rise in India and is predicted to keep on growing. New wealth is also changing the face of charitable giving and gaining public attention. As a result, the number of philanthropy advisors is also growing.

The relationship between these advisors and those who seek their help is not well understood, however, says 2015 Research Award recipient Nirojan Kulendrarajah. His research in Mumbai on challenges and opportunities for partnership and philanthropy demonstrated that “the ‘games’ or interactions between those who want to inform/advise and those who need/want to be advised are more complex and two-sided than we think.”

Fieldwork in India, a country Kulendrarajah had never visited, was both challenging and memorable. “It reaffirmed my passion for research,” he says, as did “being around research-minded colleagues, especially my other awardee colleagues.”

The gap between research and policy can be wide, but 2014 IDRC Research Award recipient Jyotiraj Patra has identified three steps for bridging it: trust, time, and transition. “I came to IDRC with limited understanding of the complexity around science-policy interface,” he says. “My mentor’s guidance exposed me to the political economy dimension of this interface. This helped me refine my research.”

Patra sought to understand how research could influence policies to reduce flooding risks in India. Through fieldwork, he learned that building trust between the local and policy communities is essential. Timing is also crucial: you have to seize the moment — a disaster or a change in government, for example — when there is an appetite for research. The third challenge is to maintain that openness to new ideas, he says. “This is all the more critical when the frequency and severity of natural hazards such as floods and cyclones are on the rise, as they are in India.”

“Each day at IDRC was filled with new energy and passion to work,” he says. “I have always been excited about knowledge-into-action linkages. My stint at IDRC amplified this passion.”