Person

Marina Apgar

Marina Apgar

Research Fellow

Marina Apgar is co-director of the Centre for Development Impact and has led evaluation research in a number of large participatory research programmes, including the CLARISSA systemic action research programme focused on the worst forms of child labour, the Tomorrow’s Cities GCRF Interdisciplinary Research Hub and the Vestibule de la Paix peacebuilding programme. She is a human ecologist and interdisciplinary researcher, with expertise in complexity theory and action research methodologies. She works on equitable and sustainable pathways to development through her methodological innovation and evidence building for systemic and participatory programming that responds to complex challenges.

She has edited volumes on participatory monitoring and evaluation, convenes professional development courses on Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation for Learning, Contribution Analysis for Impact Evaluation and Assessing the Strength of Evidence for IDS and the UK Evaluation Society. She leads the Causal Pathways initiative’s work on participation, rigour and quality and is a member of the Inclusive Rigour Co-Lab. As well as her research and teaching she accompanies local, international non-governmental and philanthropic organisations working on social equity as they build, test and use meaningful monitoring and evaluation systems.

Languages: English; Greek; Spanish; Guna

Google Scholar
https://goo.gl/iujqZC

Research

Project

Learning support to the ALIADAS-WVL programme in Mozambique

In this project, IDS designed and delivered a 5-day workshop in Nampula, Mozambique on behalf of the ALIADAS-WVL programme in March 2023. The ALIADAS-WVL programme convenes a network of NGOs working to defend the rights of women and girls across Mozambique, and requested support from IDS to...

Centre

Centre for Future Natures

A networking and research initiative that aims to share and amplify stories and knowledge from the spaces, movements and struggles for the commons and against enclosures. Through research, arts, storytelling and networking, Future Natures explores the relationships, practices and values...

Programme

European Engagement Initiative

The European Engagement Initiative provides research focus on the universal development challenges that have a global dimension within a region undergoing geopolitical change. It recognises that now the UK is out of the European Union it is even more important for IDS to engage with partners,...

Project

Action on Children’s Harmful Work in African Agriculture

Action on Children’s Harmful Work in African Agriculture (ACHA) is a seven-year research programme supported by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) that started in January 2020. The aim of the programme is to build evidence on: the forms, drivers, and experiences of...

Opinions

Opinion

Our collective path: the Inclusive Rigour Co-Lab story

In 2021, as the world was facing COVID lockdowns, anxieties and isolation, a group of us from varied learning and evaluation backgrounds—academics, practitioners, peacebuilders—connected with each other. Our lives and work spanned different corners of the globe: Mali, South Sudan, Colombia,...

Marina Apgar
Marina Apgar & 10 others

7 May 2024

Opinion

Innovating for inclusive rigour in peacebuilding evaluation

Inclusive and rigorous peacebuilding evaluation is both vital and complex. In this blog we share examples of how we are innovating our methodologies to move towards participatory and adaptive practice. The challenges of peacebuilding evaluation Peacebuilding processes and interventions are...

Marina Apgar
Marina Apgar & 9 others

22 April 2022

Publications

Working Paper

Évaluation de la recherche-action systémique en tant qu’intervention participative de consolidation de la paix au Mali : résultats obtenus à Djenné et à Mopti

IDS Working Paper 611

Ce document de travail présente les résultats d'une évaluation basée sur une théorie intégrée d'une initiative participative de construction de la paix mise en oeuvre dans les cercles de Djenné et de Mopti au Mali dans le cadre du projet Vestibule de la Paix.

27 August 2024

Marina Apgar’s recent work

Past Event

Practicing inclusive rigour: Moving from trade-offs to bright spots?

Watch now https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hbminon-7x8 Questions about rigour, validity and credibility are central concerns of all evaluation practice. So too should be how we pay attention to meaningful participation to enable greater equity, especially when embracing complexity and seeking...

17 May 2024

Specialist short course

Contribution Analysis for Impact Evaluation

Short course to equip individuals and organisations to more effectively design impact evaluations using a contribution analysis framing.

From 13 January 2025 until 17 January 2025

Past Event

Evaluating Research for Development: innovation to navigate complexity

In this Centre for Development Impact (CDI) seminar we will launch the Special Issue in the European Journal of Development Research on Evaluating Research for Development: Innovation to Navigate Complexity. Watch now https://youtu.be/IPr37pUpDO0?t=83 Large publicly funded programmes of...

20 April 2023

Past Event

Causal pathways network: exploring methodologies for causal analysis

This CDI seminar introduced the emerging causal pathways network which seeks to help philanthropy and other funders to open up the black box of strategy and systems change by building awareness, will, and skills to use evaluation approaches that can make sense of causal relationships without...

22 March 2023