Catherine Kelly
Postdoctoral Associate
Catherine is an evaluator and researcher with experience evaluating capacity-building interventions and researching the influences of evaluation systems that are embedded within organizations. She is a Postdoctoral Associate at MIT, where she is supporting the ASPIRE project in answering its priority learning questions. ASPIRE’s learning questions investigate key intermediate outcomes of pilot interventions and seek to identify causal mechanisms and contextual factors contributing to bringing about these outcomes. Catherine will identify and apply the most appropriate methodologies to support learning from the project. She will also use the evaluation to identify what aspects of the approach are working and what factors could be adapted to support the institutionalization and replication of ASPIRE’s approach more broadly.
Before joining MIT, Catherine worked as an Evaluation and Research Lead for the UK Department for Education, as an evaluation consultant on UK foreign office-funded projects, and as an evaluator building the evaluation capacity of English higher education providers. She uses theory of change and complexity-informed approaches in her evaluation work.
Catherine holds a PhD in Education from the University of Bristol, graduate degrees in Educational Research from the University of Bristol and International Education Policy and Management from Vanderbilt University, and an undergraduate degree in American Studies from Canterbury Christ Church University.