Dr Caroline Harper is a Principal Research Fellow and Director of ODI’s Gender Equality and Social Inclusion programme. She is an anthropologist with 30 years’ experience in research, qualitative and participatory research methods, research management, policy analysis and advisory work.

Caroline leads work on gendered social norms and culture change, and on adolescence and the achievement of critical capabilities.

Caroline works on a number of projects including ALIGN, which brings together global research on discriminatory and harmful gender norms, and GAGE, a longitudinal global research and evaluation study on gender and adolescents.

Interests also include chronic and inter-generational poverty, childhood, exclusion and empowerment with the aim of building a critical and policy relevant knowledge base and empowering researchers and activists with skills, evidence and capacity to act on findings locally and globally.

She lived and worked for 10 years in East Asia and has worked for NGOs, multi-and bi-laterals in East, Central and SE Asia and Africa.