How we think about knowledge, dignity and social change.
Three ideas shape our work: societies are best understood as a whole, the people closest to a problem know things outsiders do not, and research has to do right by the people who take part in it.
‘Ilm al-‘Umran (علم العمران): the study of how societies live.
The name UMRAN comes from the 14th-century historian and social thinker Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406 CE). In the Muqaddimah he argued that societies cannot be understood in fragments. He called the study of social life as a whole ‘ilm al-‘umran: the science of social organisation and civilisation.
In Arabic, ‘umran carries the sense of cultivating, building and inhabiting. For Ibn Khaldun, what holds a society together is ‘asabiyyah: solidarity and the bonds people share.
We take that as a working principle. Policies, services and institutions sit inside relationships, histories and local politics, and research that ignores these tends to miss what matters.
Starting from local knowledge, not ending with it.
Too much research is done on communities rather than with them: outside experts collect data, interpret it through their own assumptions, and leave. The people who took part rarely see what was made of their words.
We work differently. We shape research questions with local researchers and practitioners, treat local and Indigenous knowledge as evidence, and share findings back with the communities involved. Where we can, we train local researchers and practitioners alongside the work, so the skills stay where they are needed. This is what epistemic justice means in practice for us.
What we hold ourselves to.
These commitments apply to how we work with clients, with participants, and with each other.
Craft.
Sound methods, clearly explained. Our data collection and analysis should stand up to scrutiny, and our writing should be easy to use.
Dignity.
Whether we are interviewing children affected by conflict or meeting a programme team, people are treated with respect and never as data points.
Honesty.
We report what the evidence shows and what it does not, including when that is uncomfortable, and we try to point to practical ways forward.
Relationships.
We prefer long-term working relationships with clients, partners and communities to one-off transactions.
Careful research in sensitive settings.
Much of our associates’ work involves children, displacement, detention and poverty. That calls for care at every stage, from design to publication.