Primary organizer:
Prof Ian Gough
Deputy Director
Wellbeing in Developing Countries (WeD) ESRC Research Group
University of Bath
Bath, BA2 7AY, UK

Theme: Researching Well-being in Developing Countries

This workshop builds on the existing WeD Research Group at the University of Bath and is organized in collaboration with the Measuring Human Well-being Project at WIDER (World Institute for Development Economics Research). WeD is a Research Group funded for five years (2002-07) by the UK Economic and Social Research Council, the official body responsible for funding scholarly research in Britain. ESRC Research Groups and Centres are national focal points for social science research where a concentrated grouping of academics and researchers can collaborate on long-term projects. WeD is the only such Group in the country working on issues of well-being or development and its budget is £3.25m. Located in Helsinki, WIDER was established in 1985 as the first research institute of the United Nations University. It has a long history of research on well-being and related topics.

Goals of the workshop
The workshop will review new thinking on human well-being and associated themes (such as needs, poverty, quality of life) across the social sciences and address the challenges in translating this into meaningful empirical research in developing country contexts. It will bring together scholars and researchers from five continents, and from developed and developing countries. It will have two specific aims: first, to report on and evaluate the state-of–the-art in understanding well-being from different disciplinary perspectives and second, critically to evaluate the emerging WeD fieldwork strategy to research and evaluate human well-being in four poor and middle income countries (Ethiopia and Bangladesh, Peru and Thailand). The workshop will be organized around the three central conceptual themes of the WeD Research Group: Needs, Resources and Quality of Life (QoL), in each case addressing both conceptual and methodological research issues, resulting in six distinct sessions. The final two sessions will discuss the potential for trans-disciplinary research into these themes and how to translate these into relevant policy in and for the developing world.

Proposed output:
A book, edited by Ian Gough and Allister McGregor, with the provisional title: Researching Well-Being in Developing Countries. We are discussing this option with a few good UK publishers at present.

Date and duration:
Friday 2 July – Sunday 4 July, 2004

Provisional Programme

1230 Light lunch at Hanse Institute

Friday 2 July

Afternoon session: INTRODUCTION TO THE WORKSHOP

1315	Dr Wolfgang Stenzel, Hanse Institute for Advanced Study: Welcoming address
1330	Dr Allister McGregor, Director, WeD Researching wellbeing: Communicating between the needs of policy makers and the needs of people
Afternoon session: HUMAN NEEDS AND HUMAN WELLBEING
1430	Conceptualising human needs: Prof Des Gasper, ISS, The Hague: Conceptualising human needs: a framework Prof Ian Gough, WeD: Human well-being and social structures: relating the universal and the local
1600	Coffee break
1630	Researching human needs: Dr Sabina Alkire, Harvard U. and Global Equity Initiative: Needs, capabilities and participation Dr Pip Bevan, WeD, and Dr Alula Pankhurst, Addis Ababa U.: Human Needs and Human Harms: Some Evidence from Rural Ethiopia Prof Geof Wood, WeD: Well-being as a Problem of Security
1845	end
1930	Dinner at the Hanse Institute for Advanced Study
Saturday 3 July
Morning session: QUALITY OF LIFE AND SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING
0900	Conceptualising QoL: Prof Richard Ryan, Psychology, Rochester U, New York: Autonomy and Independence: The Eudaimonic Approach Prof Monika Bullinger, Hamburg-Eppendorf U. The Challenge of Cross-Cultural Quality of Life Assessment -
1045	Coffee break
1145	Researching QoL: Prof Valerie Moller, Rhodes U, South Africa: Researching quality of life in a developing country: Lessons from the South Africa case Dr Mariano Rojas, Universidad de las Americas-Puebla, Mexico: The complexity of well-being A life satisfaction conception and a domains of life approach Prof Heinz-Herbert Noll, ZUMA, Mannheim: The European System of Social Indicators
1315	Lunch at the Hanse Institute for Advanced Study
Afternoon session: RESOURCES: FROM MATERIAL TO CULTURAL
1415	Conceptualising resources: Dr Sarah White, WeD: Resources, livelihoods and wellbeing in social practice Dr James Copestake, WeD: Watunakuy: Understanding Changes in Material, Social and Cultural Dimensions of Development in Peru and Beyond Dr Awae Masae, WeD Thailand: Material and Cultural Resources and Well-Being in Rural Thailand -
1615	Coffee break
1645	Researching resources: Prof Mark McGillivray, WIDER: Towards a measure of non-economic national well-being achievement: and other constructs Prof Andy McKay, WeD: Researching vertical and horizontal inequality (with reference to middle income countries)
1830	end
2000	Dinner at Hof Hoyerswege
Sunday 4 July
Morning session: WELL-BEING: INTERDISCILPLINARY RESEARCH AND POLICY-MAKING
0915	Doing inter-disciplinary research into wellbeing Dr Pip Bevan, WeD:Working across the disciplines: key problems and some ways forward Dr Marion Glaser, Bremen University:Putting local well-being into the game? A transdisciplinary approach to mangrove management planning and monitoring in North Brazil
1045	Coffee break
1115	Well-being in developing countries: From research to policy-making Dr Charles Gore, UNCTAD Dr Hetan Shah, New Economics Foundation, London Dr Awae Masae, Faculty of Natural Resources, Prince of Songkla University, Hat Mai, Thailand Dr Allister McGregor, WeD
1300	End Lunch at the Hanse Institute for Advanced Study