Rahardhika Utama, Atma Jaya Catholic University Researcher and former Arryman Scholar, Develops CORE, a Policy Tool to Bridge Research and Action on Global Poverty
Rahardhika Utama, a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute for Advanced Research (IFAR) at Atma Jaya Catholic University in Jakarta, Indonesia, and former Arryman Scholar at Northwestern, has developed a new platform to transform how academic research on global poverty and development is accessed and applied by policymakers, practitioners, and researchers.
The platform, called CORE, or the Collection of Oriented Research and Evidence for Solving Global Poverty, synthesizes thousands of peer-reviewed studies into concise, plain-language summaries, highlighting what was studied, what was found, and why it matters for policy. It was created in partnership with the Center on Global Poverty at Johns Hopkins University.
At the 10th Annual Sociology of Development Conference at Johns Hopkins University, participants identified the persistent problems of research fragmentation, paywalls, and other factors making quality research inaccessible to decision-makers. With the new CORE platform, policymakers gain access to this research, while researchers gain a broader audience for their work. CORE can also be integrated into classroom settings, helping students access research and allowing them to expand the database through curated readings and original summaries.
“There’s more high-quality research on development than ever before, but the real challenge is getting it into the hands of those who can use it,” Utama said. “CORE offers a practical and scalable way to bridge that gap.”
Utama is a recent graduate from the Department of Sociology at NU and was previously awarded the prestigious Theda Skocpol Best Dissertation Award by the American Sociological Association.