Japanese Award for Outstanding Research on Development
Global Development Network
A USD 10,000 award for a multi-method study with Rishikesan Parthiban on using social media to produce, disseminate and increase the uptake of development research.
The project was “Effective use of social media to produce, disseminate and enhance uptake of developmental research: A multi-method study”, done with Rishikesan Parthiban, then a doctoral scholar at IIM Calcutta and now Assistant Professor of Information Systems and Analytics at IIM Tiruchirappalli. The competition records the entry under my name; the work was ours together.
The award is funded by the Government of Japan and administered by the Global Development Network, and is given for research that bears on development policy and practice. Three finalists were chosen from 32 applicants and presented in Bonn, and the award carried USD 10,000.
The subject matter is close to the bone for an academic: research that nobody reads changes nothing, and the question was whether social media actually moves development research into use, or only moves it around.