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The Policy Lab (sm)

321 Columbus Avenue
Seventh Floor of the Electric
Carriage House
Boston, MA 02116
United States of America
Telephone: +1 617 440 4409

Ruth Payne


Ruth Payne, Ph.D. (UK)
is a Senior Associate. Ruth is a Director of the UK-based firm Bell & Payne Consulting where she manages research projects for clients including think, tanks, international development organizations and public sector organizations. Ruth brings to The Policy Lab a decade of experience in ethnographic and participatory research and collaborative approaches to programme design and policy development in the international development sector. She has been involved in designing and managing research projects in the UK and internationally in countries including Ghana, Zambia, Indonesia, Nepal and Rwanda, and has particular expertise in research with children, youth and families.

Ruth is a former member of the Security Needs Assessment Protocol Project team at UNIDIR. She originally studied Geography at the University of Wales, Swansea and subsequently obtained a Masters in Development and Environment at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her doctoral research on child-headed households in Zambia, conducted in collaboration with the UK based NGO Street Child Africa and government and civil society organizations in Zambia, involved the development of a collaborative approach to program design in which fresh approaches to programs and services are generated by brining researchers, beneficiaries and research participants together throughout research, design and planning processes, where research findings are considered as ‘challenges’ rather than ‘recommendations’.

Ruth is an Honorary Associate at the Centre for Developing Areas Research at Royal Holloway, and holds Associate positions at the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships at Edinburgh University and the Centre for Child-Focussed Anthropological Research at Brunel University.