Katy Oswald is a Research Officer in the Participation, Power and Social Change Team. Between 2009 and 2011, she worked on the Capacity Collective, a research project that supported 6 action-research initiatives in Nicaragua, Ecuador, Peru and Ghana to understand how capacity development can be better supported, in particular looking at the role of power in shaping people's and organisation's capacity to achieve positive social change.

She has also worked with several NGOs on developing and improving their opportunities for learning from their M&E systems. She is also an experienced facilitator of learning and participatory action-research processes.

An underlying assumption to all her research and consultancy is that people living in poverty are largely cut off from avenues of power, and the realisation of their rights depends on people and organisations having a better understanding of the dynamics of power, with a view to changing them.