This series of webinars was first presented at the Causal Pathways Symposium 2023, which focused on "connecting, learning, and building a shared understanding of the evaluation and participatory practices that make causal pathways more visible"
Hippolyt Pul
Hippolyt has more than 35 years of work in research, planning, management, and evaluation of programs and projects in social and economic development, governance, peacebuilding, and conflict across Africa. He is currently the Founder and Executive Leader of the Institute for Peace and Development (IPD), where he heads up IPD’s research and evaluation services on conflict, development planning and management, social cohesion building, and peacebuilding interventions. His prior experience includes working in various positions with Catholic Relief Services where he served as Coordinator for Justice, Peace, and Governance Working Group for Africa (Oct 2009-Jan 2014), Deputy Regional Director for Program Quality for Central and West Africa (Oct 2004-Sept 2009), and Regional Technical Advisor on Governance for West Africa (2003-2004), among others.
Hippolyt’s use of holistic approaches in the design and conduct of research and evaluation assignments stems from his experiences and belief that the challenges of conflict, peace, governance, and development that communities face are not isolated; they are intricately intertwined. He also believes strongly that change in every circumstance is possible but transformative change comes from within, not without i.e. change happens when people and communities change from within. However, there are no single magic bullets nor straight pathways to making lasting change that address complex, interwoven personal and societal needs. Instead, triggers of enduring change come from multiple, often unexpected angles that involve actors with a commitment to make change happen. Hence, understanding how and why change happens is often more important than knowing what has changed. Hippolyt’s evaluation and research approaches, therefore, focus on using holistic and participatory approaches to create spaces for participating communities to find their own solutions to their conflict, peace, and development challenges. For this, mixed methods research that uses outcome harvesting, mapping, storytelling, and other methods that put voices and faces from qualitative data on the numbers generated from quantitative studies are important to him.
He holds a PhD in International Conflict Analysis and Resolution, a master’s degree in public and social policy, and several postgraduate certificates and diplomas. He speaks and writes French and is adept in the use of various computer-based data analysis and reporting software for quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods research and evaluations. He has worked principally across Africa, but also in Peru and in the Deep South of Thailand.
Contributed by this member
Resource
- This session of the Causal Pathways Symposium 2023, by Carlisle Levine and Hippolyt Pul, introduces outcome harvesting, a method to collect evidence of what has changed and whether and how an intervention has contributed to these changes.