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Global rules and regulatory institutions have major and ever-growing importance in contemporary governance. However, connections between global governance and citizens are often weak, compromising effectiveness and legitimacy. Civil society organisations (CSOs - including Non- Governmental Organisations, business forums, trade unions, think tanks and social movements) offer major potential to link global governance institutions (GGIs) with affected publics. Professor Scholte's sustained programme of research in this area, and related provision of resources and training to international beneficiaries such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), has had significant social impact in raising both the quantity and the quality of GGI-CSO relations.
Challenging the popular perception of Pentecostalism as a `made-in-the-USA' religion and advocating the global beginnings, multiple origins and local initiatives of the phenomenon, Anderson's research has had profound effects on the self-understanding and practices of Pentecostal Christian churches across the globe. He has inspired a world-wide audience through his outputs that are used within Pentecostal communities and have resulted in invitations to give public lectures and addresses to large, global church audiences.
His writings and lectures have also influenced the philosophy behind curriculum design and course content in seminaries where lay and ordained ministers are trained, particularly in India, the Philippines, South Korea, Ghana and Ecuador. The Anderson agenda for alternative, `post-colonial' Pentecostal identities has helped develop a new vision for the movement and its regional missionary expressions.
Professor Timon Screech's scholarship on under-researched areas of Japanese art, history and culture has reached a range of audiences outside of academia. Notably, it has produced a significant impact on cultural life, demonstrated most clearly by its influence on the renowned author David Mitchell in the writing of his best-selling historical novel The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, set in Japan in the late 1700s (2010). Mitchell drew extensively upon several of Screech's publications to inform and, ultimately, enrich his work of fiction, furnishing it with historical contextual detail unavailable in any other scholarly source.
Professor Richard Caplan's research explores the challenges that arise in the context of post- conflict peace- and state-building. His work on exit strategies and peace consolidation led the UN Peacebuilding Support Office (PBSO) to ask him to examine specific challenges to designing and implementing transitional strategies in peace operations, and to suggest how these challenges could be met more effectively. This work initiated a process within the UN to introduce more rigorous benchmarking practices for peacebuilding, laid the foundations for the development of a common UN methodology for measuring peace consolidation and played an instrumental role in the production of a United Nations handbook on peace consolidation monitoring, entitled Monitoring Peace Consolidation - United Nations Practitioners' Guide to Benchmarking (United Nations, 2010). The handbook is being used to support practitioners engaged in peacebuilding across the UN system.
Research undertaken at the University of Manchester (UoM) highlights the need to address issues of accountability and reflexivity within the NGO sector, and has contributed towards both performance improvements within individual NGOs, as well as the strengthening of sector-wide policies. Impacts have been achieved through a process of ongoing consultation and feedback: identifying, anticipating and analysing key challenges, generating new conceptual frameworks, and building critical relations between the academy and practitioners. This contribution has been clearly acknowledged by both NGOs and other development agencies. In particular, the research has directly assisted the work of organisations and groups as varied as: governments (e.g. El Salvador's); major international NGOs based in both the global north (e.g. The One World Trust, Mango) and south (SDI, BRAC); and bilateral and multilateral aid agencies (e.g. DFID, UNRISD).
Dr. Matanle's analysis of the social and cultural geography of Japan is repositioning public understanding of Japan's development dynamics among the following groups:
By exploring regional and sectoral contradictions in Japan's 20th century expansion and drawing out implications for Europe, East Asia, and post-tsunami reconstruction, Dr. Matanle's research is being used in policy formulation, public discourse and communication, and education to develop a deeper and more comprehensive approach to anticipating development trends in the 21st century.