Evidence If you are in a position to consider collaboration with an academic team, it is important to keep in mind that research partners can often bring in their own resources for an impact evaluation – or may work with you to jointly raise funds from sources which are ringfenced for research. When securing funding in this way, evidence generation is likely to be the primary interest, and program design and delivery will need to be adjusted to prioritise this. Researchers are likely to be most interested in collaborating with established programs where there is already some evidence of promising results. It can often take a year or more to secure funds for academic impact evaluation, underlining the need to begin discussions as early as possible.
It is helpful to explore a range of options when considering collaboration with an academic team. These can include:
- Academic centers which specialize in research on VAW (for example LSHTM, University of Liverpool, UCSD, Emory University, Harvard University, University of Oxford)
- National research councils in LMICs which specialize in research on VAW, sometimes through collaboration with counterparts in HICs (for example South Africa Medical Research Council, National Institute for Medical Research in Tanzania, Kenya Medial Research Institute, Integrated Medical and Research Centre in India, The Thailand Research Fund).
- Multilaterals which have teams, internal bodies or schemes which conduct or fund VAW impact evaluations (for example the EU, or the World Bank’s Development Impact Evaluation Group (DIME) and Gender Innovation Labs)
- Foundations and other organisations which fund/conduct impact evaluations (for example the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie), Wellcome Trust, Gates Foundation, Oak Foundation, Wellspring Philanthropic Fund)
- Development Economists who increasingly evaluate violence prevention efforts
An initial step can be to issue an Expression of Interest (EoI) in order to get a sense of which researchers may be interested in exploring potential collaborations. Funding and hosting initial exploratory meetings can then be a helpful way for you to learn about their research interests and for them to learn about your VAW program. These meetings can also help with trust-building and two-way input into proposal development for funding.
