Engaging with evidence and uncertainty: choosing where to start
Charlotte Maugham and Sandy Oliver | 20th December, 2021 This blog was first published on the From Poverty to Power blog There are two powerful trends playing out in the development and humanitarian world: the push to make better use of research evidence to produce viable policy options, and the localisation agenda. The two are sometimes treated as mutually exclusive – “I mistrust any decision made without reference to critically appraised evidence.” vs “Ah, but my operating context is so unique that only knowledge held
Read more
The Uganda Country Evaluation Map: a country-led approach to building policy relevant evidence bases
3 December 2021 Evidence and gap maps (EGMs) have grown in popularity as an important component of evidence architecture for evidence-informed policy and practice in recent years. The Uganda Country Evaluation Map – the first country EGM – identifies potential knowledge gaps and opportunities for synthesizing existing evidence for Ugandan policymakers to use. It includes all policy domains that affect the welfare of the country’s people, as well as all evaluation types, including formative, process, outcome, and impact evaluations. CEDIL interviewed two of the map’s
Read more
COVID-19 and refugee-owned businesses: What can phone surveys tell us?
Ceren Baysan | 21 September 2021 One of the primary ways that immigrants integrate with a new country is through work. Businesses, and the industrial structures within which they operate, thus play a central role in providing the opportunity for recent arrivals to earn a living while contributing to the local economy with skills, information, or new market opportunities. Our field work in Gaziantep (Antep), an industrial city in southeast Turkey with a large share of Syrians, involves understanding the role played by small and
Read more
Unpacking complexity in international development
Marcella Vigneri | 5 July 2021 Complexity is an unavoidable trait of society and human behaviour. It has been researched and modelled across disciplines in the social and natural sciences to understand how best to tackle it. CEDIL has made the unpacking of complexity in international development interventions one of its core research themes. As part of this undertaking, the Centre organised a public webinar to discuss current evaluation methods and best practices in addressing complex interventions. In addressing the topic, the speakers discussed various
Read more
Generating and using evidence during a global crisis: what can we learn from the humanitarian sector?
Marcella Vigneri | 12 March 2021 In September 2020, CEDIL opened its new webinar series with a thought-provoking talk between Ruth Hill – Chief Economist at the Centre for Disaster protection, and Kevin Watkins – CEO at Save the Children UK. The event was a great opportunity to ask our colleagues to talk about their work as scholars and as promoters of evidence use in disaster prevention and humanitarian settings. What lessons can be learned and transferred in response to the ongoing health, economic and
Read more
Big data in the time of a pandemic
Zeba Siddiqui and Francis Rathinam | 24 December 2020 With a significant number of active cases globally, the novel coronavirus represents an extreme public health challenge. The outbreak of the pandemic has led to stringent travel restrictions, making data collection a highly challenging task for the development research community. Traditional methods of data collection which require field visits can be risky during these times. In this context, if appropriate privacy and ethical safeguards are in place, then big data is both relevant and useful, now
Read more