Reducing Fragility & Conflict: Emerging Insights from Impact Evaluations

Speaker: Aprille Knox, Policy Manager, Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab 

Chair: Dr Christine Cheng, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, King's College London

What are the most promising strategies for reducing crime, violence, and conflict? The past decade has seen a dramatic expansion in the experimental literature designed to help answer this question. Moving beyond evaluations of individual programs, these studies seek to advance our understanding of what drives individuals and groups towards violence and conflict and the levers at our disposal for their reduction.

While there may not yet be a list of peacebuilding and governance interventions that are ready to scale, as we might find in sectors such as education or health, several promising lines of inquiry have emerged as new research probes the mechanisms behind successful interventions—i.e. how they work. This seminar will highlight the most important discoveries from randomized evaluations in recent years and illuminate how this field of research is providing key insights for more effective programming. Drawing on a recent review of emerging evidence, it will cover a range of interrelated topics—from policing and justice provision to peacebuilding and dispute resolution—highlighting new insights for programming, while also identifying where evidence gaps remain.

Bio:

Aprille Knox is a Policy Manager at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), where she manages the Crime, Violence, and Conflict sector.

As a member of the Policy group, Aprille works with governments, NGOs, academics, and others to build research partnerships and promote evidence-informed policymaking. Prior to joining J-PAL in 2017, Aprille worked as a Graduate Research Assistant for Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) in Monrovia, Liberia, developing evaluation materials and training enumerators for a variety of randomised evaluations. Aprille also worked as a member of the governance team at Results for Development (R4D) and served as a Public Health Educator with the United States Peace Corps in Guinea.

Aprille holds a master's degree in global affairs from Yale University's Jackson Institute and a bachelor’s degree in international studies from Boston College.

Please register via Eventbrite, all registered attendees will receive an email with Zoom access information.

This event will be recorded.