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
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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
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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
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What can we learn from the HIV pandemic about how to tackle Covid-19? A middle-range theory lens
Howard White | 15 October 2020 HIV and Covid-19 are different. You need more intimate contact to catch HIV, but it was far more deadly once you did so prior to the widespread availability of antiretroviral drugs. But they are also the same. Both are pandemics for which we have no vaccine yet. Behaviour change to reduce the risk of infection is the only protection we have. It therefore seems sensible to ask, what can we learn from tackling HIV for fighting Covid-19? Unsurprisingly, I
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Impact Evaluation in the Time of a Pandemic
By Edoardo Masset | 3 June 2020 CEDIL recently awarded 25 grants to research teams to conduct a series of innovative evaluation studies. The awards were made before the pandemic outbreak and the study designs were presented at a workshop in Oxford on 26-27 February 2020 just as the crisis began to unfold in Europe. As the pandemic became global, we became aware that many of the CEDIL- supported research teams would have to change their plans to adapt to the crisis. Some research teams
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Taking disability evidence to the policy makers who need it
Thomas Shakespeare | 7 May 2020 How much is known about disability and development? In particular, how much is known on how best to improve the lives of the one billion disabled people in the world? Sadly, there are huge gaps, as the WHO and World Bank World report on disability 2011 and more recently the CEDIL-supported evidence and gap map 2018 have demonstrated. The former was unable to provide detailed guidelines on the best interventions. The latter found 138 eligible studies of which 53
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