Area
International development
My development work — program evaluation, capacity modeling, research partnerships in complex country contexts — sits at the meeting point of the other areas here: systems methods applied to reform and institution-building, done with in-country partners rather than prescribed from outside. It overlaps heavily with peace engineering and with sustainability-goal modeling, so rather than duplicate those pages I'll keep this one short and point across to the real work. I'd rather be honest that this is a smaller, more focused body of work than pad it with projects I can't stand behind.
Evidence
The work here
The development-facing work I can point to directly:
- Sahel reform work. A multi-year judicial-reform engagement in Burkina Faso with the United States Institute of Peace, plus a related public write-up (“A Sahel Town Builds a Way to Improve Reforms—and Foreign Aid”). Read the case: Systems thinking for Burkina Faso judicial reform.
- Development-goal modeling. Peer-reviewed work modeling interactions among the Sustainable Development Goals and the water-energy-food nexus — the analytical backbone for reasoning about development trade-offs. See the publications page.
Closely related areas: Peace engineering & conflict and Sustainability & energy systems.
This area is deliberately thin here. Much of what would count as development work is already told through the peace and sustainability pages, and some of it isn't mine to publish. If you have a specific development question, ask — I'd rather scope it honestly than list projects I didn't lead.
Method
The method here
What this area draws on: systems thinking and system-dynamics modeling to reason about how a development intervention moves through an institution; participatory design with in-country partners, so the work is built with the people affected; and the same discipline of naming assumptions and showing uncertainty that I apply across every area.
Where this area leads
If you're a foundation, institute, or development organization, the foundations lane is the direct route. Tell me the context and who your in-country partners are, and I'll be straight about whether this is a fit.