Applications Invited for FutureWORKS Asia Cycle 2

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About the Organization

Enormous amounts of money are invested annually in digital technology. The potential of digital technology for economic and social progress is substantial though they aren’t, in themselves, necessarily the answer to higher incomes and a better life. Combined with other factors, digital technology provides a means to improve people’s capabilities and knowledge so that they may better their lives.

The Asia Pacific is seen as driving the global economy, yet within it lies South Asia, home to the world’s largest concentration of poor people. Some of the world’s highest tech industry performers belong to the region, as well as some of the lowest.

Digital access and use in many developing countries is held back by laws and regulations. Existing policy and regulatory arrangements actively hinder people from using such technology to live their lives. New, low-cost technologies are very often restricted or exploited through these laws and regulations. LIRNEasia is working to change this situation.

Our mission:

Catalyzing policy change and solutions through research to improve the lives of people in the Asia and Pacific using knowledge, information and technology.

We want to see inclusive economic development in the Asia Pacific.

LIRNEasia is a pro-poor, pro-market think tank. What this means is that we are in favor of decentralized innovation – including through competitive markets – to enhance the lives of the poor. Everything we do has to have benefits for the poor.

About the Grant

LIRNEasia, invites proposals for a second round of gender-responsive, policy-relevant, applied research projects that contribute to a Sustainable and Inclusive Future of Work under the FutureWORKS Asia initiative. This call is supported with funding from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC).

This second Call for Proposals focuses on generating actionable insights by identifying what solutions and policies have worked (or not), under what conditions, and how they can be adapted or scaled across different contexts. Projects should contribute directly to informing and influencing policy and practice in low- and lower-middle-income countries in Asia.

About FutureWORKS Asia: The International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada is a Crown Corporation that supports and strengthens the capacity of people and institutions in developing countries to undertake the research that they identify as most urgent. It works with researchers and research users as they confront contemporary challenges within their own countries and contributes to global advances in their fields. IDRC recently launched the FutureWORKS initiative.

Through the FutureWORKS initiative, a Southern-led multidisciplinary research network is being built, dedicated to researching and addressing the policy challenges posed by the changing landscape of work across the Global South. Through shared research, network consolidation, knowledge sharing, and collaboration in public policy processes, FutureWORKS seeks to foster innovation that advances skills for the future of work and promotes decent work globally.

LIRNEasia was selected in 2023 as the Asian hub (the Hub) for the FutureWORKS Asia research network, leading in the establishment of the network over a period of five years. Similar networks will be built in Africa by the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of Ghana; in the MENA region by the American University of Beirut; and in Latin America and the Caribbean by Red Sudamericana de Economía Aplicada. Together, these regional networks will form the FutureWORKS Collective.

LIRNEasia is a regional policy and regulation think tank, working primarily in the digital space, and on topics which intersect with the digital sector, including future of work. Our mission is Catalyzing policy change and solutions through research to improve the lives of people in the Asia and Pacific using knowledge, information, and technology. In 2024, through a competitive call for a first round of research, LIRNEasia selected five research projects to form the first cohort of Asian network partners. The five projects commenced in 2025 and will run through 2027. This call for proposals for a second round or cohort will seek to address similar challenges to the first call, however will favor proposals that make a concerted effort towards understanding what solutions work (or not, and why), in terms of policy approaches where they have been applied, rather than understanding of the challenges and inequities that need to be solved (of which there is already a fair understanding of).

FutureWORKS Asia hub objectives:

The work of the FutureWORKS Asia hub centers around creating new, actionable knowledge that contributes to changing policies and practices that help the workforce in low and lower-middle income (L-LMIC) Asian countries, as they transition towards just and equitable work in light of the changes and disruptions to work ecosystems. These changes include increasing digitization (especially the rapid advancement of AI), climate change and energy transition to low-carbon economies, and demographic changes (declining birth rates, aging, and migration), and more recently disruptions to the global order of trade; all through the lens of gender, equity and inclusion. An important dimension of this work will be that it does not seek to address each of these challenges in isolation, but it will explore their implications where the forces intersect. For example, how the adoption of AI-based green technologies might affect job displacement, job augmentation, skills requirements, etc., particularly among marginalized groups. The core focus of the second cohort of projects will be on identifying and understanding solutions that work, rather than diagnosing and describing the problems that we already know a fair amount about.

As the Asia Hub, LIRNEasia aims to achieve the following over the five years, in order to achieve the global network objectives:

• Build and nurture an Asian research network focused on the future of work, which will together with similar networks in the other regions form a global research network.
• Facilitate high-quality, policy relevant, and gender-responsive research from the region, by establishing a regional research agenda and implementing it through the award and management of over 12 research grants through two or more competitive selection cycles.
• Build and enhance research and policy engagement capacity of research grant recipients (i.e., the network members), through: a. Group capacity building/enhancing activities within the research network to enhance their work, share expertise and develop synergies between network members and their research. b. Provide tailored support to network members where needed1 based on capacity assessments conducted at early stages of the grant.
• Facilitate inter- as well as intra-network knowledge-sharing and peer learning opportunities among network members.
• Disseminate research to identified stakeholders to facilitate the translation of research to policy impact.

Call for proposals:

LIRNEasia, invites proposals for gender-responsive, policy-relevant applied research projects that contribute to a sustainable and inclusive future of work in the Asian region. The objectives of this call are to:

• Design and produce high quality, innovative, gender responsive and policy relevant research to address future work and skill challenges and opportunities to advance skills, strengthen social protection and promote decent work in light of the combined forces of mega changes that are disrupting work ecosystems across the globe, specifically: digital technology adoption, climate change and the transition to low-carbon economies (including its intersection with digital technology changes), and demographic changes.
• Contribute to the on-going policy dialogues, within the above-identified domain at national, regional and international level, with relevant stakeholdersinside national innovation systems, education systems (state run and other), government policy makers, technology platforms, multi/bi-lateral agencies and funders.
• Enable LIRNEasia (through 1.1 and 1.2) to establish and develop a network of research partners that work collaboratively on policies and skills required for a future of work in light of the above-identified challenges facing low- and lower middle income (L-LMIC) Asian nations.

Call priorities:

Given the trends and patterns shaping labor markets, and given that there is already a great deal of emphasis on diagnosing the problems hitherto, this call will try to orient projects to be more solutionoriented. This is not to say that research projects that seek to understand the effects of changes and disruptions to labor markets will not be funded, but these projects should fill specific knowledge gaps, with strong policy relevance and justification. A heavier weight will be placed on projects which try to understand better what solutions and policies exist, what has been tried and tested (or failed), what are the lessons that can be transplanted elsewhere.

To this end, successful grants will address research questions that are relevant to making changes in policy and practice, that support decision-making across government, industry, and other sectors. This may include identifying and analyzing best or good practices, synthesizing existing evidence on what has or hasn’t worked, conducting impact assessments, identifying how to scale up successful solutions, or undertaking comparative analyses of strategies and approaches. Specifically, this can include:

• Case studies and comparative analyses of emerging best-fit practices and policy solutions — including both successes and instances where policies, programs, or corporate initiatives have not achieved desired outcomes — to generate actionable learnings that can inform future efforts across the region and beyond; understanding of under what conditions certain policies will work versus not; understanding the conditions for scale up of pilot solutions
• Exploration of emerging trends and uncertainties related to the future of work — including new patterns, risks, concerns, or opportunities that remain underexplored or poorly understood, however the proposal should be solution focused.
• Quantification of impacts — assessing the effects of new or evolving policies, business practices, technological disruptions, or socio-economic shifts on workers, firms, and economies (to the extent that sufficient time has elapsed for impacts to be visible; this could include follow-up studies to recently completed rigorous baseline studies)
• Contextualizing and replicating studies from the Global North (or other parts of the Global South) — testing whether trends and outcomes observed in the Global North (via previous studies) are mirrored in the Global South. Where differences arise, research should identify underlying contextual factors and implications for policy and practice adaptation. Comparisons could also be made with pre-existing studies from other parts of the Global South also.
• Solution-oriented, evidence-based approaches — emphasizing practical insights with clear strategies for dissemination, uptake, and engagement with relevant stakeholders.
• Potential for influence and convening — research that can shape discourse, guide strategy, and foster collaboration among policymakers, industry leaders, worker organizations, and other key actors. Innovative methods to answer these questions are encouraged , such as use of novel data sources and methods, etc.; bringing in together stakeholders that can impact change, develop solutions, develop new policies, develop ways to scale up a existing solution etc., particularly for marginalized groups.
• Implementation processes – projects that support and study the process of implementing a solution (including research, capacity building and convening activities toward this end); these projects should also seek to document the implementation process and have an MEL component to facilitate learnings of what worked versus not, for other countries/domains.

Proposed research must:

• Be relevant to an L-LMIC country in Asia as defined by the World Bank as at 1 July 202539; to the extent where concrete policy lessons can be drawn from the experience of recently transitioned or other relevant countries (with similar contextual features), such countries could be included within the scope of this call, but with strong justification (e.g., experience with an innovative skills policy, or social protection scheme, etc.).
• Have gender, equity and inclusion considerations as the central priority of the research.
• Take into consideration, and connect to the impacts on workers of the aforementioned mega changes, connecting with at least two (if not all) of the three mega changes that are described in Section 2.
• Broadly address one or more of the key policy areas identified in Section 3. o Applicants are free to broaden or narrow down the scope as appropriate (e.g. take a regional view or a national view; to explore the gig economy only instead of all jobs, focus on one sector of the economy etc.), add or modify the research questions within the broad thematic, to add sub-questions under each, and to add new questions that are relevant to the thematic focus of this call for proposals. Proponents should identify context-relevant priorities in their proposal.
• Ideally lead to the development, replication, or scaling up of solutions (policy or practice).

Eligibility

Eligible applicants may include, research institutions, universities, think tanks, associations, civil society organizations, and non-profit organizations. The core criteria which will determine eligibility are:

• The project will result in public interest research (which aligns with the overall FutureWORKS Asia objectives of a sustainable and inclusive future of work), which is made available freely in the public domain as per IDRC open access guidelines. You can review the guidelines here: IDRC Open Access Policy.
• The organization has a firm and demonstrated commitment to making policy impact through the project. This should be demonstrated through the planned activities of the project, as well as through past activities/successful policy influence.

The following are not eligible to apply:

• Individuals
• Private organizations whose business is a product or service targeted at workers as their customers (e.g., online job portal, recruitment agencies, etc.)
• Government organizations and institutions (with the exception of public research and educational institutions)
• UN agencies

Eligible applicants may bring in partners that fit into the above 3 categories above, however, funds from successful projects may not flow to the following:

• Individuals who are part- or full-time employees of the public sector/government, with the exception of state-owned universities or public research institutions.
• Government organizations and institutions (with the exception of public research and educational institutions)
• UN agencies
• Organizations based in India or Myanmar

Expertise/experience requirement:

Proposals should ideally be submitted by an eligible organization, that has a demonstrated track record of producing rigorous research related to at least two of the following:

• Labor force skills, technology adoption in labor, climate change, just transition, gender responsive climate polices, technology policy, skills development, and innovation systems.
• A demonstrated ability (capabilities and networks) to effectively translate research to policy.

How to Apply

Deadline for proposal submissions is 1800 hrs Indian Standard Time, 09th July 2025.

2025 CFP – Call for proposals

For more information please check the Link

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