CEGA’s Award-Winning Approach to Promoting Diversity and Inclusion
This year, CEGA was recognized by the American Economic Association (AEA) for our efforts to promote diversity and inclusion in the field of economics and within our center. In this post, Maya Ranganath, Associate Director of Global Networks and Inclusion, reflects on CEGA’s inclusion strategy, pointing to unequal power dynamics in global development research and discussing how CEGA ensures that our work — externally and internally — is consistently aligned with our core values.
At CEGA, we regularly reflect on what it means to produce evidence for decision-makers in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) from our position at an elite academic institution in the United States. In recent years, we have increasingly focused on how scientific narratives are “owned” by privileged groups and have updated our diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ) strategy to address this dynamic. While inclusion has always been core to CEGA, we have consistently updated our strategies to match evolutions in the development research ecosystem.
CEGA’s theory of change centers our DEIJ goals: our third pillar is to “make the evidence ecosystem more inclusive.” We pursue three interlocking objectives in support of this:
- To center the voices of underrepresented groups — including researchers, decision-makers, and study participants in LMICs — in social science research and policy debates.
- To ensure that rigorous evidence exists to help decision-makers in LMICs address injustices in society.
- To create a diverse and welcoming community at CEGA, respect and reflect the communities in which we live and work, and encourage the broader evidence-informed policy ecosystem to seek the same.
We pursue these objectives by investing in LMIC scholars and institutions, supporting inclusive and equitable research, promoting ethics in research, diversifying our networks and team, and creating an environment where our staff and researchers feel a sense of belonging. Below we highlight some of the most important aspects of our DEIJ strategy.
Investing in LMIC Scholars and Institutions
Since 2008, CEGA’s Global Networks initiative has bolstered the leadership of scholars from Africa, South Asia, and other low-income regions by equipping them with the tools, skills, networks, and funding they need to thrive. We organize short-course workshops, host semester-long fellowships, and provide extensive follow-on support. To date, CEGA has hosted 85 scholars at UC Berkeley, Northwestern University, and virtually. The fellowships provide the opportunity to audit relevant courses, present work in seminars, apply to competitive funding calls, receive mentorship, and network with faculty members and students. These scholars have received nearly $2 million in grant funding to promote their independent research activities and mainstream of development research globally. Program alumni started the Network of Impact Evaluation Researchers in Africa (NIERA) in 2018, an independent organization of former fellows that works to advance decision-focused evaluations in sub-Saharan Africa.
Importantly, the capacity-strengthening support we provide to LMIC scholars is designed to meet the demand for training and mentorship in the short- and medium-term. Longer term, we are eager to support the transfer of ownership of these types of programs to LMIC institutions, to leverage their growing capacity and resources to train and mentor the next generation of African scholars.
As a learning organization, CEGA is committed to pursuing open inquiry and debate about the barriers to — and opportunities for — inclusion across the evidence-informed policy ecosystem. Through our Collaboration for Inclusive Development Research (CIDR), we are working with NIERA to develop an evidence-based theory of change for inclusion that delineates which stakeholders are best placed to add value at various stages of the research-to-policy pipeline.
Supporting Inclusive and Equitable Research
Many research approaches in development economics reinforce Western notions of “epistemic superiority” over indigenous ways of knowing. CEGA has long encouraged an inclusive approach and a plurality of methods and disciplines that, together, make our research more accessible and more relevant to a broader range of stakeholders. While we continue to prioritize the use of impact evaluations where feasible and appropriate, we also support studies that leverage quasi-experimental methods, qualitative methods, data science, and mixed-methods approaches.
As a re-granting institution, we recognize our power to fund research equitably and inclusively and support research that challenges unequal power structures. Our research granting policy formalizes how and when research teams should consider DEIJ criteria when awarding new grants. Typically, when evaluating research proposals, we include criteria that assess the diversity of the research team and of the larger portfolio. We have also developed a “co-authorship statement” with our grant awards outlining how researchers should be credited for their contributions, encouraging greater equity within research teams.
CEGA prioritizes research activities that address persistent inequities and injustices in society. This means moving beyond sub-group analysis and conducting research with transformational potential for traditionally disadvantaged groups. For example, CEGA recently established a “Gender & Agency” theme to support gender transformative research aimed at dismantling harmful power structures and promoting gender equity. Additionally, our domestic-facing portfolio, the Opportunity Lab, hosts an initiative on “Racial Equity in the Labor Market,” which examines the role of state and federal wage and employment policy in reducing racial disparities and promoting greater equity of economic opportunity in the United States.
CEGA’s Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences (BITSS) works to democratize the way social science is produced, scrutinized, and shared by realigning incentives for knowledge generation and use. For example, the BITSS catalyst program invests in scholars from LMICs to encourage transparent and reproducible research. Tools and standards that foster open access to data, code, and published research make it easier for LMIC researchers to access and advance new research. Additionally, the Social Science Prediction Platform (SSPP) provides a tool for sourcing input from community members, amplifying local knowledge, and helping to inform better research.
Diversifying our Network and Team
CEGA continues to pursue a more diverse staff and network of affiliates. We have audited and refined our hiring processes, writing more inclusive job descriptions, disseminating them to diverse institutions, and developing a more equitable interview process. While the work of diversifying our organization will never be “finished,” our efforts have yielded some progress: currently, 27% of our staff come from underrepresented backgrounds (as defined by UC Berkeley), up from 9% only three years ago. To track our progress, we conduct annual demographic surveys with staff, measure staff perceptions of the Center’s equity and inclusivity, and enable anonymous feedback mechanisms. Meanwhile, we recently revamped our compensation framework to ensure that staff of different backgrounds are compensated equitably and transparently. We also audited and adapted our affiliate nomination process to ensure it is equitable and conducive to a diverse network. Importantly, we maintain a variety of staff forums to discuss our positionality in development research and reflect on current events in our communities.
CEGA’s DEIJ work is managed by a dedicated working group that I lead as the Associate Director of Global Networks and Inclusion, and guided by an internal DEIJ strategy and set of key performance indicators. We are energized by the AEA’s recognition of our efforts over the years, while acknowledging that we have a long way to go to achieve our DEIJ goals. In this spirit, we welcome your comments and feedback on our approach. We further commit to sharing our learnings, including our challenges and failures, openly and transparently. Please stay tuned for more updates on DEIJ in the near future.
