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. After living in Latin America for 13 years where he worked with a number of NGOs on capacity development and evaluation of microcredit and urban community development; he worked for 25 years with the World Bank on evaluation, gender and capacity development. His focus has been on evaluation methodology, poverty, social exclusion, gender equality and women’s empowerment, complexity and urban development. He has taught and written extensively on how to conduct methodologically sound evaluations when working in real-world development contexts. Since retiring from the World Bank in 2001 he has consulted with 12 UN agencies, multilateral development banks, and bilateral aid agencies. He is a member of the International Evaluation Advisory Panel of the UNDP Independent Evaluation Office and has advised the Evaluation Office of the Rockefeller Foundation
Over the past few years he has worked on the opportunities and challenges for integrating new information technology into the evaluation of development programs. Since 2001 he has been on the Faculty of the International Program for Development Evaluation (IPDET) where he has offered workshops on complexity, gender and development, and mixed methods. He has also directed and co-directed a series of workshops on big data and development at the American Evaluation Association and IDEAS.
His recent publications include: “Dealing with complexity in the evaluation of development programs”, “Integrating big data into the evaluation of development programs”, “RealWorld Evaluation: working under budget, time, data and political constraints”, “Evaluating the Social Development Goals through equity-focused and gender-responsive evaluations.” and “Big Data Analytics – optimism and caution.”
