The four participating universities are selected because of their strengths in their subject fields and their complementary disciplinary orientations, which will ensure innovative interdisciplinary collaboration. Together the research environments conduct research in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America using a wide range of analytical perspectives and methods.

Although the four partners have strong track records in development research and poverty reduction, their doctoral training programmes have failed to systematically focus on aspects of governance, power, and inequality in the analysis on the SDGs and poverty reduction.