BRAC Institute of Governance and Development - BIGD

On May 20, we hosted a workshop under the Learning and Innovation Laboratory (LILA) initiative, bringing together colleagues from BRAC and BIGD to reflect on emerging questions around urban poverty in Bangladesh.

During the session, BIGD's Farah Muneer (Program Coordinator, MELA) and Md. Karimul Islam (Senior Research Associate), shared insights from several studies conducted on BRAC programs, covering urban vulnerability, adolescent skills development within ultra-poor households, and the long-term experiences of program graduates. The discussion was further enriched by reflections from Dr Imran Matin (Executive Director, BIGD) and Dr Munshi Sulaiman (Research Director, BIGD), alongside Hossain Ishrath Adib (Senior Director, BRAC). Drawing on this evidence, participants engaged in collaborative discussions to identify knowledge gaps, generate new ideas for inquiry, and explore how existing evidence can inform future studies and interventions addressing urban poverty and vulnerability.

Find more details about the LILA Initiative through the link in the first comment 👇

We hosted the first session in our Master Class series on June 4. The session, titled "Political Thinking of Karl Marx and Its Contemporary Relevance," was led by Dr. Mirza M. Hassan, Advisor for the Governance and Politics Cluster at BIGD. In attendance was a crowd full of BIGD colleagues and budding social science researchers from Envisioneers.

Karl Marx's thinking had three sources: German philosophy, British political economy, and French socialism. This observation by Vladimir Lenin enjoyed full consensus among intellectuals and activists for decades. But recent archival findings indicate that Marx's thinking was also influenced by the political theory of Republicanism, which was popular during the 19th century in continental Europe. Based on this, he fashioned his own political theory of radical Republicanism.

Dr. Hassan's Master Class focused on the development of this theory of Marx, which essentially influenced his notion of democracy, state-society relations, and politics. He also talked about the implications of Marx's radical Republican political thinking for conceptualizing politics and governance of our time.

Are you an early-career researcher and interested in attending more events like this? Join Envisioneers by following the link in the first comment.👇

What if feature phones, not smartphones, are enough to drive women’s digital inclusion? ☎️

A new BIGD policy brief by Munshi Sulaiman (BIGD) and Hashibul Hassan (Jagannath University) finds that a 15-week IVR-based distance learning program in rural Bangladesh led to long-term gains in mothers’ agency, economic empowerment, and digital connectivity, four years after the intervention ended.

The findings challenge the assumption that meaningful digital inclusion requires high-tech solutions.

📖 Read the policy brief in the first comment

📢 Our latest quarterly newsletter is here!

The January–April 2026 issue of BIGD Works introduces our first-ever impact framework, developed by our Monitoring and Evaluation for Learning and Adaptation (MELA) team to assess how and how well we pursue our mission of knowledge for a better world.

This issue also captures a busy start to 2026:
● Two major conferences: one on economic inclusion for persons with disabilities, and another on the forthcoming State of Governance report
● The RIDGE initiative supporting early-career researchers
● A new Tong Alaap podcast episode on the future of development studies
● A selection of our latest publications

Check the first comment to explore what we've been working on 👇

On May 21, BIGD organized a reflection workshop with the Whole Child Development (WCD) Community of Learning and Practice to collectively reflect on the sustainability, performance, and learning emerging from the WCD program and its partner-led initiatives in Bangladesh. The workshop brought together WCD’s partner community — including BRAC Institute of Educational Development, Bangladesh ECD Network, Synergos, and the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh — to discuss how these efforts may continue to evolve within the wider system beyond the life of the program, while also reflecting on how collective learning is shaping collaboration across partners.

BIGD’s Monitoring and Evaluation for Learning and Adaptation (MELA) team, serving as the program’s learning partner, gathered insights from partner organizations to understand how collective actions may contribute to broader systems-level change in Early Childhood Development (ECD) in Bangladesh.

To learn more about the MELA Initiative, follow the link in the first comment 👇

How can Bangladesh's RMG sector move toward cleaner, more sustainable energy use?

On May 24, Tahmid Bin Mahmud, Senior Research Associate at BIGD, presented his ongoing research, titled "Capacity Building of Factories in Sustainability and Climate Action," at বিআইজিডি গবেষণার খোঁজখবর.

Supported by the Embassy of Denmark, the study examines how textile factories can use energy more efficiently and make production more sustainable. It also highlights how factory-level energy data can help Bangladesh move closer to its renewable energy transition targets while building a shared data platform for the entire sector.

📖 Learn more about the research through the link in the first comment

A mobile phone-based distance learning program introduced during COVID-19 continued to shape mothers’ digital connectivity, agency, and economic empowerment four years later. 🌱

New evidence from rural Bangladesh highlights how low-tech interventions can generate lasting effects for both mothers and children, especially among lower-income and less-educated households.

📖 Link to the new working paper by Hashibul Hassan (Jagannath University) and Munshi Sulaiman (BIGD) in the first comment

সবাইকে জানাই পবিত্র ঈদুল আজহা'র শুভেচ্ছা।

What happens when digital health systems scale faster than smartphone access? 📱

New findings from a WEE-Connect funded study in Western Kenya show strong mobile phone use and growing AI awareness among women and community health workers, while also raising important questions around trust, accessibility, and who may still be left behind.

Link to blog in the first comment 👇