Michael Bamberger has a Ph.D. in Sociology from the London School of Economics. He has been involved for over forty years in the evaluation of development programs in Africa, Asia and Latin America, including 25 years as a senior sociologist with the World Bank. His work has focused on poverty and social exclusion, gender equality, urban development and the challenges of evaluating the MDGs. Over the past few years he has worked on the opportunities and challenges for integrating new information technology into the evaluation of development programs. His recent publications include: “Evaluation in the age of big data”; “Dealing with complexity in development evaluation”, [with Jos Vaessen and Estelle Raimondo]; “RealWorld Evaluation: working under budget, time, data and political constraints” [with Linda Mabry]; and “Evaluating the Sustainable Development Goals through equity-focused and gender-responsive evaluations.” [with Marco Segone and Florencia Tateossian]
Over the past 20 years he has consulted with 10 UN agencies, multilateral and bilateral development agencies, development banks, foundations, NGOs, and governments on the evaluation of development policies and programs.
My contributions
Evaluation in the age of big data: Opportunities and challenges in agriculture and food security
BlogEvaluators working in the areas of food and agriculture are constantly seeking creative ways to produce credible evaluation findings and recommendations while working under one or more of these constraints. Big data and data science can make a difference.
With the rapid expansion of big data and data science in all areas of our personal and professional lives, a vast range of new tools and techniques for data collection, analysis and dissemination are becoming available, many of which hold exciting potential for the evaluation of development programmes.
The potential of big data technologies is especially evident in the current pandemic
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Michael Bamberger
Free lance consultant