Deadline: 14-Nov-2025
The Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) Peace and Recovery Initiative (PRI), funded by UK International Development, supports a diverse portfolio of activities — including rigorous impact evaluations, pilot programs, exploratory studies, evidence dissemination, and policy engagement.
The Peace & Recovery Initiative (PRI) supports research that strengthens policies and programs to prevent, respond to, and recover from social, political, and humanitarian crises. It funds projects addressing issues such as conflict, state violence, collective action, terrorism, organized crime, and post-crisis recovery.
PRI prioritizes studies that test or develop theories of peace and recovery, challenge existing assumptions, pioneer new research methods, and produce evidence in underexplored areas.
Key research focuses include understanding why individuals participate in violence, the role of psychological, social, and economic factors, and interventions that promote peace—such as behavior change, reintegration programs, and the use of technology to prevent recruitment into violence.
The Peace & Recovery Initiative will consider proposals for five types of projects—exploratory grants, pilot studies, full studies, infrastructure and public goods creation, and evidence use and policy outreach support.
Exploratory grants, capped at $10,000, are intended to develop preliminary research ideas and build relationships or data for future evaluations. Pilot studies, with a maximum award of $75,000, aim to prepare for full impact evaluations through design, testing, or measurement development.
Full studies, which can receive up to $500,000, will rigorously evaluate interventions’ causal effects, often through randomized or quasi-experimental methods. Infrastructure and public goods creation grants, up to $250,000, will support datasets, tools, or research frameworks that facilitate future evaluations.
Evidence use and policy outreach support grants, capped at $25,000, are meant for building partnerships with policymakers, supporting evidence dissemination, or embedding researchers within policy organizations.
Proposals will be assessed based on five equally weighted criteria: academic contribution, policy relevance, technical design, project viability, and value for money. Reviewers will consider the study’s relevance to PRI’s focus areas, the strength of its methodology, the robustness of partnerships, the scalability of findings, and cost-effectiveness.
Ethical considerations are central to the review, with an emphasis on the safety and security of research participants and staff, as well as securing appropriate ethical approvals. PRI also values diversity in research teams and encourages participation from researchers based in or with lived experience in the countries of study.
To qualify, proposals must include at least one researcher affiliated with a university and demonstrate experience in field research and impact evaluations.
The mandatory Expression of Interest (EOI) deadline is November 14, 2025, followed by the full proposal deadline on January 16, 2026, with results expected in March 2026.
For more information, visit IPA.