German Institute of Development and Sustainability

IDOS is a non-profit company with limited liability. While the Institute maintains its institutional independence, which is guaranteed by the Institute’s founding statute, its shareholders are the Federal Republic of Germany and the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia. Since March 2020, Anna-Katharina Hornidge leads the institute as its Director. At present, IDOS has a staff of more than 200, two-thirds of whom are researchers.

IDOS draws together the knowledge of development research available worldwide, dedicating its work to key issues facing the future of development policy. IDOS’s research is theory-based, empirically backed, and application-oriented. It serves as the basis for the Institute’s consulting activities, which in turn provide the initiative for further research programmes. IDOS’s Postgraduate Training Programme is an integral component of the Research and Consulting process. The many years of experience of the Institute’s professional staff as well as the creative impulses generated by the future development experts and managers trained at the Institute serve to reinforce one another. The policy advice and consulting services IDOS provides are bearing on the framework conditions of development policy, including issues concerned with world economic policy, foreign policy, and security policy.

The Institute’s Postgraduate Training Programme is concentrated on courses dedicated to development-related themes and issues bound up with shaping the process of globalisation as well as with improving trainee communicative and social skills. The cornerstone of the Postgraduate Training Programme – field research carried out by small interdisciplinary groups in a developing country – serves to provide trainees with an opportunity to gain practical experience with what they have learned by participating in concrete consulting-oriented research projects. Once they have completed the Postgraduate Training Programme, the graduates find career opportunities with development organisations in Germany and abroad. The approximately 1,000 alumni of this program form a global network that makes it easier for the institute to anchor its research results and consulting services in the German, European and international networks of development policy. Well-known alumni include Achim Steiner, de:Jutta Frasch, Hans-Joachim Preuss and de:Ingrid-Gabriela Hoven.

In addition to the Postgraduate Training Programme, the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS) offers Young Professionals from selected partner countries of Germany’s international cooperation the participation in the “Managing Global Governance (MGG) Academy”. The highly qualified participants from Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan and South Africa work in governments, Ministries, Universities, policy-orientated Think Tanks or research institutions. This unique exchange and learning opportunity supports the creation of a sustainable, equitable and effective global governance architecture.

The research staff is involved in numerous international renowned research projects and contributes to policy networks. Their research and publications focus on practice-oriented research, is divided into the following research fields and concentrates on the following regions:

• Inter- and Transnational Cooperation
• Transformation of Economic and Social Systems
• Governance, Statehood, Security
• Environmental Governance and Transformation to Sustainability
• Transformation of Political (Dis-)order: Institutions, Values & Peace
• Asia
• Central and Eastern Europe
• Latin America
• Near and Middle East, North Africa
• Sub-Saharan Africa
• Library and documentation

The library of the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS) is structured like a public reference library. It has some 48,000 volumes, 150 periodicals and the most important German and English daily and weekly newspapers. IDOS places great value in maintaining and evaluating national and international periodicals. The evaluation follows the research and consulting activities of IDOS and the FIV rules. IDOS is a member of the German Information Network International Relations and Area Studies (Fachinformationsverbund Internationale Beziehungen und Länderkunde /FIV-IBLK). The indexing is part of the database "World Affairs Online” (WAO) and is searchable via the IREON portal. IDOS publications are part of the IBLK-catalogue.

• German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS)
• The German Information Network International Relations and Area Studies (FIV-IBLK)
• IREON Gateway International Relations and Area Studies
• IBLK Catalogue (Karlsruhe Virtual Catalogue, KVK)