Four key initial programs
Four programmes carry SAFI’s mission from research design through to the communities and decision-makers the findings are meant to reach.
Producing Informed Policy Research
Rigorous, locally grounded research that gives policymakers in South Asia and their international counterparts a shared, credible evidence base.
- Annual flagship country reports covering all nine nations
- Issue-based policy briefs with explicit recommendations
- Open access datasets and methodological appendices
- Direct distribution to government and non-government policymakers
Producing Informed Policy Research
SAFI aims to produce an annual flagship country report, and issue-based policy briefs on South Asia, which will be shared with a wide audience, including government and non-government organizations and policymakers.
The centrepiece is an annual flagship country report covering each of the nine nations SAFI works across. Each edition combines original survey data, expert assessment, and a review of the year’s legislative and diplomatic record, so that trends can be compared reliably from one year to the next.
Alongside the flagship series, SAFI publishes issue-based policy briefs responding to developments as they happen. Briefs are short by design, carry explicit recommendations, and are distributed directly to government and non-government policymakers as well as being published openly.
Interdisciplinary Data Gathering and Analysis
Public opinion research and data analysis organised into thematic labs, each directed by experts in the field.
- Multi-country public opinion polling with published methodology
- Thematic analysis labs directed by subject experts
- Comparative datasets across the nine nations and the diaspora
- Data partnerships and resource exchange with global institutions
Interdisciplinary Data Gathering and Analysis
Our program for gathering and analyzing public opinion is a vital component of SAFI. We adopt a multi-thematic and interdisciplinary approach to data collection and policy analysis, organized into analysis labs each directed by experts.
This program is organized into various analysis labs, each directed by experts. Our focus areas include regional security, democracy, election, governance, peace, refugee issues, environmental policy, and education. Labs share instruments, sampling frames, and quality standards, so findings can be read across themes and across borders.
Survey design, fieldwork protocols, and weighting decisions are documented and published alongside results. Where data collection is constrained — by access, security, or capacity — we say so plainly rather than presenting an incomplete picture as a settled one.
Informed Public Discourses
A standing convening programme that brings decision-makers and researchers into the same room — on the record.
- Panel debates, conferences, lectures, and interviews
- Published proceedings and recorded sessions
- Roundtables convening policymakers and civil society
- A speaker programme drawing on global and regional expertise
Informed Public Discourses
We actively engage practitioners, scholars, government officials, private sector representatives, civil society members, and our stakeholders in open conversations, discussions, and lectures about significant trends in South Asian affairs.
SAFI plans to organize a series of regularly scheduled events, including panel debates, conferences, lectures, and interviews. We intend to invite world leaders and top analysts from various fields around the globe to participate, with deliberate attention to equitable representation from all nine targeted countries.
Convenings are designed to produce something durable: each major event is paired with a published summary, a recording where participants consent, and where appropriate a follow-on brief that carries the discussion into the policy process.
Community Development and Conflict Management
Practical engagement with communities in the region and across the diaspora, built on partnership rather than prescription.
- Partnerships with community organisations across the region
- Diaspora and refugee engagement programmes in the United States
- Internships and professional development for students
- Conflict management research grounded in local practice
Community Development and Conflict Management
Community engagement activities will be developed through partnerships with relevant stakeholders across South Asian countries and within the refugee and South Asian diaspora in the United States.
The programme connects SAFI’s research directly to the populations it concerns — youth, vulnerable groups, refugees, immigrants, and practitioners — and treats their assessment of a problem as evidence in its own right, not as an afterthought to expert analysis.
Conflict management work focuses on the practical: mapping local mediation capacity, documenting what has worked, and creating channels through which community-level findings reach the officials whose decisions shape them.
Programme areas under the Institute
For each of our programme areas, we aim to create a Policy Lab under the Institute — directed by experts and working to a shared standard of evidence.
Evidence that reaches the people who decide.
Partner with the Institute, join a policy lab, or apply for an internship. We work with researchers, institutions, and communities across all nine nations and the diaspora.