Global Impact Collaboratory

Consulting for Development

We work with development contractors to support rigorous social research. We have particular expertise in designing data collection, training teams, and detailed technical support through analysis, at baseline and for subsequent monitoring and evaluation. Our core GIC team includes world leading anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, geographers, lawyers, educators, and data analysts.  We understand development program activities need to be fast and agile, so we are too.

Our team has worked in every world region and are world renowned experts in many development domains, including rule of law, climate change, biodiversity, health care, gender, nutrition, food and water insecurity, poverty, discrimination, conflict and peacekeeping, and migration. We have extensive professional networks with social scientists across the globe, including many robust partnerships with academics and practitioners in lower and middle income countries.

Housed with the nation’s largest and top-ranked anthropology program, the GIC has unmatched access to ethnographic and practical expertise relevant to working with vulnerable groups (women, immigrants, minorities, HIV+, etc) and in lower income countries. We also work closely with and are situated nearby to ASU’s Center for Global Health,  Global Institute of Sustainability, the Center for Biodiversity Outcomes, Simon A. Levin Mathematical, Computational and Modeling Sciences Center, the Spatial Analysis Research Center, the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict, and the Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes. Located in the nation’s largest research university, we have a large network of other expertise surrounding us that can help solve any complex development challenge.

Training in Social Research Methods

We are experts in professional training in social research methods. We train MEL staff through on-site and online workshops, including a certificate program at Chemonics International. We partner with ASU’s Institute for Social Science Research to offer advanced master-classes in specific social science methods. In addition to their expertise more standard social data collection methods like surveys and focus groups, GIC people are teaching the methods they themselves helped revolutionize, like systematic ethnographic analysis of web blogs and online data, social network analysis, qualitative thematic interviews, text analysis, and cultural consensus analysis.

We also train thousands of students every year who are enrolled in degree programs at ASU and other universities across the globe in social research methods. Undergraduate students intern on all our projects, learning through doing. These energetic student-collaborators from all around the world bring fresh ideas and expertise of their own home communities, enriching all we do. We love teaching and mentoring emerging professionals, and GIC team members have won multiple major instructional awards.