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

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

Opinion

Finding and using causal hotspots: a practice in the making

This is the second blog in our series ‘Lessons on using Contribution Analysis for impact evaluation’. In our first blog, we introduced Contribution Analysis (CA) as an overarching approach to theory-based evaluation and the idea of causal hotpots as a way to zoom in, unpack and make the hard...

15 September 2021

Publications

Working Paper

The Art and Craft of Bricolage in Evaluation

CDI Practice Paper 24

This CDI Practice Paper makes the case for ‘bricolage’ in complexity-aware and qualitative evaluation methods. It provides a framework based on a review of 33 methods to support evaluators to be more intentional about bricolage and to combine the component parts of relevant methods more...

14 October 2022

Report

Learning from Life Story Collection and Analysis With Children Who Work in the Worst Forms of Child Labour in Nepal

Learning Note 2

The CLARISSA Nepal team collected and analysed 400 life stories of children and young people engaged in or affected by the worst forms of child labour (WFCL), particularly in the “Adult Entertainment” sector in Nepal, which includes children working in Dohoris (restaurants playing folk...

Shanta Kakri & 3 others

1 October 2022

Report

Learning from Life Story Collection and Analysis with Children who Work in the Leather Sector in Bangladesh

Learning Note 1

The CLARISSA Bangladesh team successfully collected and analysed 405 life stories from children in the worst forms of child labour (WFCL). Our key learning from undertaking this first part of a systemic Action Research process in the context of WFCL is as below: Trust and rapport...

22 July 2022

Marina Apgar’s recent work