The quest to find find actionable data for policymakers in developing countries

Two years ago, during one of Guy Grossman's frequent trips to Uganda, he had some downtime between his lectures for the Penn Global class he was there teaching. So, he arranged a meeting with the top official in the Ugandan office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). During that meeting, Grossman posed a question: "What keeps you up at night?"

At the time, budget tightening in Uganda, which hosts more refugees than any other country in Africa, had cut support for 85% of those refugees, though the 15% of neediest refugee households would still receive the same level of provisions. UNHCR was worried about the implications of the aid cuts for this marginalized population but wasn't sure how to assess the impact of this dramatic policy shift. Grossman had an idea: The Penn Development Research Initiative (PDRI), which he'd created in 2020 to address the challenges facing developing nations, could survey households just above and just below the 15% need threshold. His team would collect data for a year to show the effect of the aid cuts on refugee well-being.

The project had potential because Grossman, David M. Knott Professor of Global Politics and International Relations, had relationships in Uganda and the backing of Penn's resources. The proposed study had a robust design, and because it would happen in partnership with UNHCR and the Ugandan prime minister's office, it would have funding and access to the refugee population. Grossman could recruit Penn undergrads to help undertake the in-country research.

The study would also potentially provide UNHCR a useful tool, says Erik Wibbels, Presidential Penn Compact Professor of Political Science and founder of DevLab@Penn, which assists social scientists at the University with research designs. "They could take it to international audiences and say, 'Listen, you don't give us the money that you say you will every year, and the result is that there are refugee kids in Uganda who are starving.'"

It was just the kind of project Grossman and Wibbels envisioned for PDRI-DevLab. The initiative, which brings together dozens of Penn faculty and students from across seven schools, focuses on three flagship themes-migration and forced displacement, environmental and land policies, and big-data analytics-and has projects in 27 countries so far.

It's more than publishing ideas in policy papers. It is a quest to investigate social, political, and economic issues seen in developing countries and to find actionable data for policymakers. Until recently, PDRI-DevLab had just one full-time employee. It has grown enough to hire two research managers, an administrative assistant, three data scientists, several Ph.D.-level researchers, and a small army of undergraduate fellows. Heather Huntington, PDRI-DevLab's executive director, has a background in policy. Those connections have helped the initiative secure a strong donor base and are part of her pitch to faculty and students thinking about collaboration.

"We're in the room with the policy people," Huntington says, "and they will change their programming based on what's being studied. That's pretty powerful."

This story is by Matt Gelb. Read more at Omnia.