This article looks at how the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) has participated in, contributed to, and been shaped by debates around gender and sexuality. Through interviews with key participants in the gender and sexuality research story of IDS, we explore certain periods and themes over the last four decades. These are the introduction of gender research at IDS in the 1970s, the development of the MA Gender and Development (GAD) in partnership with the University of Sussex in the late 1980s; the co-construction of knowledge with the development of BRIDGE in the 1990s; and the Pathways of Women’s Empowerment programme, gender myths and sexuality, and the emergence of work on men and masculinity from 2000. These selected stories highlight the particular strength of IDS’ convening role in creating the spaces for academics, activists and others to come together to politicise the dialogues by revealing normative assumptions often taken for granted in gender and sexuality.