Practical tools to support evidence use in policy-making

I’ve been working on evidence use for the last seven years, or so. I started out in the VakaYiko Consortium, under the Building Capacity to Use Research Evidence...

Can think tanks help cure Sri Lanka’s ailing democracy?

10.00 am, Colombo, Sri Lanka.  I’m on a bus 5,000 miles away from London, reading about Cast From Clay’s study on democracy in the UK. They warn of an...

Exploring diversity, equity, and inclusion in think tanks

OTT Talks to Grant Dalton, researcher at the Institute for Government, a leading British think tank, about the findings of a diversity and inclusion sector report he co-authored and...

Bringing science to citizens at the Lima International Book Fair

The Lima International Book Fair (FIL) has established itself as the most relevant publishing industry space in Peru. And, for the Editorial Fund of the Universidad del...

Non-profit finance mind shift: from cost recovery to mission delivery 

OTT is evolving as an organisation. We started over a decade ago as a personal blog. With funding from the Hewlett Foundation, we grew into an initiative. And today, we...

Curating your research: making connections to communicate effectively

A few days ago, I walked into a second-hand bookshop and left without buying anything. It was a cramped little store and was filled with books. I did a few circles around...

How to use ChatGPT to improve your think tank communications

ChatGPT – the AI-powered writing assistant – can help make your communications more effective, and, importantly save you time. At first, I wondered if ChatGPT was...

Tips to get started with ChatGPT in your think tank

AI technology will revolutionise how we work. We can’t fight it, so let’s learn how to use it to help us! Based on the last few weeks I’ve spent experimenting...

Decolonising research capacity development

The capacity to produce and use knowledge remains low across many countries in the Global South. However, efforts to build, strengthen or develop research capacity have produced mixed...

Research methodologies: context and ethical considerations amid COVID-19

COVID-19 has renewed our focus on the importance of context in research. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw a wave of disruptions across a multitude of spectrums, which...

ChatGPT: a game changer for the knowledge industry?

Like millions around the world, I spent the holiday period playing with ChatGPT . It is a large generative pretrained transformer (GPT) language model developed by...

Candid talk about funding: David Sasaki, Hewlett Foundation