Communicating research to the wider world

I have written, presented and contributed to several research outputs for policy, practitioner and other non-academic audiences. Some examples below.

Vaccine confidence

Blog post Herath, De Figueiredo & Larson (2022) “Racing the pandemic: collecting data on drivers and levels of vaccine confidence in Nigeria at a critical time” featured by COVIDAction – a programme funded by UK Aid, focused on building a technology and innovation pipeline to support the pandemic response and recovery.

Working group co-leading the Vaccine Confidence Group’s participation in a working group on Vaccine Confidence in Sub-Saharan Africa, led by Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) in collaboration with research, policy and industry players.

Labour Markets in South Africa

Panel discussion J-PAL Africa webinar on Job Search and Hiring with Limited Information in South Africa (2021)

Policy brief Ismail-Saville, Lemon, Herath, Zizzamia and Piraino (2021), YES COVID-19 Employment Survey policy brief “What Employers Want: Getting Young People Working.”

Case study Abel, Burger, Carranza, Herath, and Piraino (2018). “Helping young people in South Africa bridge the gap between intention and behaviour in their search for work” – Chapter 10 of OECD (2018), Case Studies on Leaving No One Behind: A companion volume to the Development Co-operation Report 2018, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264309333-en.

Op-ed De Lannoy, Leibbrandt, Allie-Edries, Graham, Herath, and Maharaj (2019). “Providing a multi-faceted package of support to young people” — co-authored op-ed with researchers from the University of Cape Town, the South African Treasury Department and other partners, first published in City Press.

Using research in policymaking

Talk (2017) “Experimenting for a Better Future: Drawing Policy Lessons from Randomised Evaluations” at the University of Witwatersrand School of Governance, Johannesburg, with Rachel Glennerster & Laura Poswell, reviewed here.

Data collection and measurement

Blog post Bakirdjian, Herath and Louw (2019) “Surveying young work seekers in South Africa: tips from J-PAL Africa’s Research Team”, University of Cape Town’s Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit (SALDRU) – focused on young work-seekers but lessons can be applied to many phone-surveying settings.

Talk Herath (2017) at the “Cape Town Data Quality Workshop: Measurement of Development Indicators” conference hosted by DataFirst at the University of Cape Town on lessons improving data quality when using phone surveys in South Africa.

Training workshop (2017) “Digital data collection for rigorous, randomised research” at the 2017 Global Evidence Summit.

Guide to “Surveyor Hiring and Training” (ongoing/continually updated by many J-PAL staff) hosted on J-PAL’s excellent research resources page.

Guide to “Field Team Management”, another J-PAL research resource.