Interview with Meghna Ranganathan by Centre SLO Grainne Cremin

Grainne Cremin: Can you tell me about your role at LSHTM or a project that you're currently working on?

Meghna Ranganathan: I'm an Associate Professor at the School focusing on evaluations and gender-based violence. I'm also the Co-director of the Gender Violence and Health Centre, alongside my role as a Deputy Co-director at the Centre for Evaluation.

I am really interested in understanding what interventions work to prevent violence against women and girls, the drivers of violence, and the methods we use to evaluate programmes that address the drivers of violence. Currently, one of my projects is a mixed-methods evaluation of a livelihoods strengthening project in Tanzania and Zimbabwe that focuses on girls around 17 years old, who have recently graduated from school. This is a group who, if they are not engaged in some form of education, training or work, are particularly vulnerable to early marriage, or other risks leading to violence or HIV infection. 

The NGO-led intervention provides tools for girls to start businesses, as well as life-skills training to address other barriers to their progress, with a focus on employment, mental health and subjective well-being. In partnership with the NGO and other academic and in-country partners, we are evaluating whether the intervention strengthens girls’ economic position and improves different dimensions of their lives.

Grainne Cremin: That sounds really interesting, thank you for sharing that! What do you wish people knew more about evaluation as a topic? 

Meghna Ranganathan: I think there's a tendency for people to think of evaluations as needing to meet targets or indicators to show that their programme is eligible for more funding. While that is true, I think it’s important to recognise that evaluations can be a lot more nuanced than that.

There are different ways of doing evaluations, using multiple methods to understand what works, for whom and how it works. And it can be co-designed with your collaborators and participants so that you're learning together to improve. When it’s done rigorously, you're able to assess whether something's working. One thing I've discovered from this livelihoods strengthening project in Tanzania and Zimbabwe is that the end users - the young women - are really the ones who we are learning from and we have engaged them from the start. Whether it is the outcomes we are evaluating, or the methodological approach we followed, it has been a project that we co-designed with them. I think collaborating with the communities and partners is really powerful, and essential for aligning our goals, learning together whilst ensuring rigour.

Grainne Cremin: What are some challenges have you faced as a woman in research?

Meghna Ranganathan: I have been lucky to have many women role models and bosses in my academic research career, so I’ve not faced major challenges as a woman in research per se.

I think my biggest challenge is not particular to being a woman in research, but my work-life balance and ensuring that I'm able to get all my work done on time, while also spending quality time with my young children, which is always a juggle with academia. Sometimes, I end up working after dinner or on the weekends.  I avoid doing that as much as possible, as I want to set an example to the early career researchers in my group. But it’s a constant juggle.

Grainne Cremin: I can imagine! Following on from that, do you have any advice for new researchers and women research researchers entering the field?

Meghna Ranganathan: My biggest advice to women early in their  research careers is to stay curious and believe in yourself. You have to know that you can achieve great things once you set your mind to it. I think one of the biggest barriers to women in academia and research is we tend to doubt that we can achieve our goals and not take risks. But I think we need to set lofty aspirations— so believe in yourself!