International Advisory Board

Philippa Bevan (Chair)

Philippa Bevan is a sociologist focusing on academic and policy-related research into patterns of life quality and causes of poverty and suffering in least-developed countries. Between 1997 and 2006 she was Research Fellow in the Sociology of Development at the University of Bath and was Country Coordinator of the Ethiopia component of the ESRC Well-being in Developing Country Programme (WED) from 2002 to 2007. She is currently working as an independent researcher, and is co-authoring a book about power and life quality in Ethiopia. She was a member of the DFID Social Science Research Committee from 2001 to 2004, and is currently the chair of the Young Lives advisory panel.

Jo Boyden, Director, Young Lives (ex officio)

Jo Boyden is Reader in Development Studies at the University of Oxford. She has a PhD in Anthropology and a BSc in Social Anthropology from the University of London. Her research has mainly focused on children and childhood poverty – particularly in bringing together academics, practitioners and policymakers to develop models and methods which respond to the needs of children, their families and their communities. Before joining Young Lives, Jo was Senior Research Officer at the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford. She has also worked as consultant on children’s issues to many NGOs and international organisations.

Patrice Engle

Patrice Engle is Professor of Psychology and Child Development at California Polytechnic State University. She previously held the position of Director of Women’s Studies in 1999, and was Chair of the Department of Psychology and Child Development from 1992 to 1995. She has also served as Senior Advisor on Early Childhood Development at UNICEF from 2002 to 2006, and as Chief of the Child Development and Nutrition section at UNICEF India from 1999 to 2002. Her work for UNICEF included coordinating with health, nutrition, water and sanitation, and education to develop an integrated approach for young children, as well as planning and developing the Lancet Series in Child Development.

Paul Glewwe

Paul Glewwe is a Professor in the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota and was previously Senior Economist in the Policy Research Department at the World Bank from 1994 to 1998. He is the author of The Economics of School Quality Investments in Developing Countries: An Empirical Study of Ghana (1999, MacMillan Press), and has co-edited books on economic growth and transition in Vietnam, and on the design of household surveys for developing countries. His major research interests are in the areas of economic development, empirical microeconomics, applied econometrics, and the economics of education. Current research projects include a longitudinal, multi-level study of children’s welfare in rural China, funded by ESRC and DFID.

Heather Joshi

Heather Joshi is an economic demographer and Director of the Centre for Longitudinal Studies at the Institute of Education, University of London. She is also the Director of the UK Millennium Cohort Study, which follows 19,000 children and their families in a multi-disciplinary study started in 2000. Research interests and publications focus on the exploitation of longitudinal data to study topics such as gender, family formation, health inequalities area effects, and child development. She is the co-author of Children of the Twenty-first Century: From Birth to Nine Months (2005, Policy Press) and of Unequal Pay for Men and Women: Evidence from the British Birth Cohort Studies (1998, MIT Press).

Patricia Light

Patricia Light is Director of Global Strategy and Partnerships for the Communication for Social Change Consortium, an international NGO that works with worldwide networks of communication professionals, development experts and academics to build local capacity as well as undertaking projects, research and analyses to catalyse innovation in the field of communication for social change. She was Director of Public Information and External Relations at Bernard van Leer Foundation until December 2007. Previously she worked for almost a decade at the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, where she built up a communications programme in children’s rights and macro-economic policies affecting children. She subsequently applied this programme in Central Asia, where she was regional Communications Officer for UNICEF. She has also worked for the International Union for Child Welfare, and for Defence for Children International. She is a standing member of the Communication Initiative and has served in a consultative capacity on diverse communications issues.

Angela W. Little

Angela Little is Professor and Chair of Education and International Development at the Institute of Education, University of London. She has served as the President of the British Association of International and Comparative Education, as co-Director of the International Centre for Research on Assessment at the Institute of Education, and as Commissioner for the Commonwealth Scholarships Commission. She is co-editor of and contributor to Education for All and Multi-grade Teaching (2006, Springer), Labouring to Learn: Towards a Policy Economy of Education and Plantations in Sri Lanka (1999, MacMillan), and Education, Cultures and Economics: Dilemmas for Development (1999, Falmer Press). She is currently directing the work of the Institute of Education team in the Consortium for Research on Educational Access and Transitions in Education, funded by DFID.

Santosh Mehrotra

Santosh Mehrotra is a Senior Economic Advisor for the Regional Centre for Asia of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and a Senior Consultant on Rural Development for the Planning Commission of the Government of India. His principle areas of expertise are on macro-economic policy, economic analyses of social sectors, gender and labour in the informal sector, and public finance and development finance. He previously worked as a Senior Policy Advisor for the UNDP Human Development Report Office, and as Senior Economic Advisor for the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, and has worked as a consultant for UNCTAD and for the ILO-Asian Regional Team for Employment Promotion. He is a member of the International Science Committee of the Council on Research on Poverty, and has served as a member of the Young Lives advisory panel since 2001.

Nikhil Roy

Nikhil Roy is Head of Rights and Economic Justice at Save the Children UK. He has extensive experience in development and human rights issues, with a particular focus in the area of juvenile justice, and worked from 1988 to 1998 at the International Secretariat of Amnesty International. He previously held the position of Head of Programmes for Anti-Slavery International, and has also worked for the Consortium for Street Children, Minority Rights Group, and Penal Reform International, as well as working as a journalist and trade union activist in India. He is also a guest lecturer for the University of East Anglia’s MA course on International Child Welfare, and is the author of Juvenile Justice: Modern Concepts in Dealing with Children in Conflict with the Law (2004, Save the Children UK).

Mary Thompson

Mary Thompson is Social Development Adviser, UK Department for International Development (DFID).

We would also like to thank the following former members of our advisory board:

Siobhan Carey, former Chief Statistician, DFID

Kathy De Silva, Department of Educational Studies, University of Oxford

Roger Edmunds, former Chief Statistician, DFID

Simon Maxwell, Overseas Development Institute