Thursday 14 November 2019

Behind the research: L. Alan Winters


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.

L. Alan Winters has been CEO of the Migrating out of Poverty consortium for six years, in his role as Professor of Economics at the University of Sussex.
It was a huge privilege and pleasure to be CEO of Migrating out of Poverty for six years. As an economist, I had worked on migration a good deal, both at Sussex and the World Bank, and, while I knew intellectually that migration was multidimensional and multidisciplinary, the consortium proved it to me. 
As CEO, I didn’t get to work with many of our researchers directly, but I read and discussed nearly all our output, and was impressed by its breadth and depth. Having strong research teams and research leadership in each of our partners allowed us both to see migration in a broad canvas, and, through comparative work, to obtain insights that were not available to other groups. Similarly, combining qualitative and quantitative work provided a rich seam of evidence that we are still working through. 
Among the things I most appreciated was the way in which, by working with each other both within the consortium and within the secretariat, we were able to achieve far more than we ever could have done as individuals or small groups. I really enjoyed our work on policy processes, in which three country studies came together to shed light on the chaotic and serendipitous process by which social science research can enter real policy-making, even in so contentious an area as migration. 
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, Alan!

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