Research News

Maggie Gill is the first of the Senior Research Fellows to join DFID. She is currently Chief Scientific Adviser for Rural Affairs and the Environment in the Scottish Government. She took up her part-time position in April 2009.

The challenges for global agriculture are immense, in terms of the need to double food production by 2050 during a period of expected increase in the incidence of drought, floods and temperature extremes. Maggie brings to DFID the expertise to help us address these challenges.

Maggie talked about DFID's reputation for being in the forefront of introducing socio-economic, participatory and multi-disciplinary approaches into the research they commission.

"The challenge for DFID research", she said "lies in the breadth of its ambition." It aims to provide evidence to inform users in many countries and many sectors of the possible consequences of their decisions in both the short and the long term. There is a need to "identify and manage the potential big wins while also meeting the urgent needs." As a Senior Research Fellow, she sees her role as to bring in new networks, creativity and good practice from her own field of work to help realise this ambition. "It will be very exciting for me to work at the interface between research and its application in an international context."

Maggie is pragmatic about the challenges of getting research into policy and practice. "We know more about influencing practice than we do about how research informs policy", she says, believing that academics working in development research are willing and able to take on the challenge. "We need to work in partnerships in order to understand how research engages and influences policy processes. This doesn't, by any stretch of the imagination, mean that all academics need to heavily engage with policy, but it does mean that we need influential academics to understand the contexts for effective engagement."

"I’ve been lucky in working at this interface in a small country, Scotland, where people know each other. Here, there are plenty of opportunities for scientists to meet with policymakers. I am interested in exploring how to scale up these lessons to be relevant across the much more complex landscape in which DFID works."

In her experience, what works?

"The ability to listen to people who are going to use your research is very important, and to frame research questions in a way that is useful and meaningful. Make useful allies. Take advantage of scientific advances: DFID needs excellent science and for that, they need to nurture and support excellent scientists."

This is one of a series of news stories which highlight developments in the DFID Research Strategy since its launch a year ago. See here for more stories on the Strategy.