As we look back on the year, one thing stands out clearly: GlobalDev, an initiative of the Global Development Network (GDN), is no longer just a platform—it is a growing, global community of researchers, practitioners, and storytellers committed to making development knowledge more inclusive, accessible, and impactful. This past year has been one of reflection, experimentation, and momentum, as we deepened existing collaborations and welcomed many new voices into the GlobalDev ecosystem.
Another trip around the sun, and it has been an exciting, enriching year of learning for the GlobalDev team. Over the past year, we published more than 45 blog pieces, featuring the work of over 65 authors. More than 70% of these authors came from the Global Majority, and almost half of our published contributors were women.
Our content this year spans a wide range of topics, from climate change to health, inclusive digital transformation, research funding, science, technology and innovation, and biodiversity and development. In line with GDN’s strategic focus, GlobalDev continued to prioritise “Inclusive Digital Transformation,” which was also aligned with GDN’s flagship event, the Global Development Conference 2025 (GDC 2025). We launched a new call for blogs in collaboration with the International Centre for Tax and Development at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), UK, exploring the role of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) in strengthening state capacity and fostering development. We will continue to publish blogs on DPI into 2026.
We also introduced a new blog series on Climate Migration, in partnership with the Center for Systems Solutions and the Future Earth US Global Hub, in support of the Belmont Forum’s Collaborative Research Action (CRA) on Integrated Approaches to Human Migration and Mobility. We look forward to reading and sharing your contributions to this important series.
More experimenting
This year, our blog became more interactive as we experimented with new interactive storytelling formats. Check out how we used inbuilt chatboxes to communicate the gender gap in Bangladesh’s digitalisation journey, an interactive map to effectively communicate about the wetlands of West Africa, tried the classic line chart to convey the challenges in Nigeria’s fuel sector and used the bar charts and info-cards to talk about digitalisation in Uganda and tried many more interactive infographics. We view these experiments as the initial step towards incorporating different formats into our blog space.
We also adopted a more cross-disciplinary approach to capacity building by collaborating with science journalists at GDC 2025. Together, we explored ways to co-create content that supports our goal of making high-quality research more accessible to wider audiences.
Capacity-building initiatives
In 2025, GlobalDev expanded its capacity-building work beyond the blog through several exciting collaborations. Our efforts grew significantly with the launch of our curated GlobalDev research communications training programme. We delivered 9 workshops this year, reaching more than 100 researchers, communicators, and development practitioners.
As we prepare to expand our research communications capacity-building hub with new training modules, we invite you to keep an eye on our Workshops page.
As we move into the next chapter, we are especially excited about what lies ahead for the GlobalDev community. The conversations, collaborations, and shared learning that have emerged around our work have shown us the value of connection beyond individual blog posts or workshops. In 2026, we will begin shaping new ways for our authors, readers, and collaborators to engage more deeply with one another. Stay with us as we build spaces that foster collaboration, peer learning, and collective impact across our growing global community.