TriQuestCreating knowledge that works
Where practice, research and policy meet

Creating knowledge that works

Much of what we know about development lies with those who do the work and those who live its consequences. TriQuest creates knowledge from practice and carries it to where it changes practice, research and policy.

NGOs, community institutions, PRIs, frontline workers

Brings to TriQuest

Questions, context, practice knowledge and implementation insight.

Gains from it

Evidence that sharpens design, and a voice in the research agenda.

10studies on the Register
3pathways from knowledge to use
8research and policy partners named on the Register
4states, plus multi-state studies
The premise

Knowledge is in practice. Three worlds hold it, and each is blindsided.

A better world is made of better practice, better policy and better knowledge. Yet what works, what does not, and why is largely tacit, rarely tested, and lost when people move on.

Practice

Practitioners

Know what works.

But seldom make that knowledge explicit.

Research

Academia

Produces rigorous knowledge.

Often on questions set at a distance from the field.

Policy

Policymakers and administrators

Design programmes at scale.

With limited sight of lived priorities, or of what is and is not working.

The gap in productionResearch misses the questions that communities and decision-makers need answered.
The gap in useEvidence is cherry-picked, or applied out of context.

Innovations born in communities seldom enter the knowledge base at all. TriQuest bridges the three worlds.

It changes the question

The same subject, asked from the ground

Pick a subject to see how the question shifts when it comes from practice.

The usual question

What happens to a mine after closure?

The TriQuest question

What assets, rights, livelihoods and capabilities do communities need for their second transition, having already been transformed once when mining arrived?

See the study →
The loop

From a question on the ground to a better outcome, and back again

01OF 05Questionsfrom societyEvidencefrom practiceKnowledge throughpartnershipBetter practiceand institutionsBetter outcomesfor society
Step 1 of 5

Questions from society

Questions are surfaced systematically from Sarpanches, elected women representatives, SHG and CLF leaders, frontline practitioners and public-system actors, and held in the Question Bank.

or select a point on the loop
The loop in use

Elected women representatives: one question, three pathways

Does agency built through SHGs carry into elected office, and what helps when it meets structural pushback?

P→P

Practice to Practice

Practice showed that women with considerable prior agency still met structural pushback on entering office. This shaped three lines of engagement: technical knowledge; understanding patriarchy and structural barriers; and networks among women representatives.

P→A

Practice to Academy

These lines are now being tested singly and in combination, in a multi-arm study with Stanford University.

P→I

Practice to Policy and Institutional Change

Emerging learning has already opened space for targeted engagement with women representatives within public programmes.

Read this study

Knowledge that works is made where practice, research and policy meet.