Research Fellow
Institute of Development Studies - Centre for Development Impact, England, United Kingdom
Giel Ton is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies and Director of the Centre for Development Impact. He specializes in the design of mixed-methods research on agricultural value chains and private-sector development. He promotes Contribution Analysis as an overarching approach of theory-based evaluation and a stepwise process to identify the hot spots where additional data collection and reflection is needed. He co-convenes the professional course Contribution Analysis for Impact Evaluation.
Most of his projects focus directly or indirectly on value chain governance and coordination. These imply configurations of incentives and institutional arrangements as ‘value chain governance mechanisms’. These mechanisms are based on an amalgam of (sometimes conflicting) formal and informal rules and regulations. Giel’s research focuses on those chains in the value chain where smallholders, local agents, farmer groups and traders exchange agricultural products or related services and negotiate the quality attributes, risks, and rewards in these transactions. In this analysis, he explores the role of other influencing factors and actors upstream or downstream of the value chain and in the institutional environment and the inequity of power in those relations.
To do so, he tries to analyse the heterogeneity of effects/impact, using the core question of realist evaluation: What works for whom under what conditions, and why? A realist analysis typically results in various context-mechanism outcome configurations (CMOs) that explain why certain contextual characteristics make that specific subgroups of actors benefit (or not) from particular support activities.
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Tuesday, October 10, 2023
9:00 AM – 4:00 PM ET