Behind the research: Allison Baldasare

Over the course of the last 10 years, the Migrating out of Poverty consortium has drawn on the enthusiasm and expertise of many people across the globe. This blog series focuses on the people behind the research, who have kindly shared personal reflections and learning from their experience of working with the consortium. 

Allison joined the Migrating out of Poverty team in 2013 at the University of Sussex as an Administrative Assistant and worked her way up to Programme Manager in less than four years. Over the past six years, Allison has been involved in all aspects of the programme administration including finance, recruitment and outsourcing, communications, publications, conference, meeting and event planning.

Working as part of the team in a professional services capacity, rather than a research capacity, allows for insights into the research community that have less to do with results and more to do with process. In the six years spent working with colleagues in the UK, Asia, and Africa, the biggest lesson for me has been in recognising that good working relationships can only be built over time, with face-to-face contact. I cannot recommend enough how making time and budget available for periodic collaborative meetings, allowing partner staff from all countries to come together throughout the project’s lifetime, helped improve the teamwork, broaden the scope of the analysis and strengthened the resulting research and uptake activity. 

As this was the first experience of my career working within the academic/research sector, I have come to very much admire the work and goals of my Migrating out of Poverty colleagues and our Department for International Development Research and Evidence colleagues. I will take forward into my future roles the sense of enquiry and justice that I felt in working with these intelligent and sensitive people. 

I feel grateful for the experiences both in the UK and in partner countries, learning just a little bit more each day about how different lives are led all around the globe and how being more familiar with these differences can only help to make the world a more equal and fair place. 

As a programme manager, my pride comes from each successfully finished project and all resulting dissemination. Therefore, being at the end-stage now, with over 30 projects successfully investigated and closed, I am happy to look back at Migrating out of Poverty’s final report, and as a cog in a ticking watch, know that I was part of that something, and without me, as without any of our colleagues, it likely would not have been the same.

The Migrating out of Poverty programme has been a true team effort, and we appreciate the role each individual has played in producing and disseminating the research.

Thank you for all your hard work with the Migrating out of Poverty programme, Allison!