Maren Duvendack has a PhD in development economics from the University of East Anglia (UEA), UK. Her key research areas cover applied micro-econometrics, impact evaluation, systematic reviews and meta-analysis. Thematically, she has been focusing on digital financial inclusion and fintech, women’s economic empowerment, reproductive health, agriculture as well as climate change and its impact on smallholder farmers.

She is a Professor of Evaluation in Economics at the School of Global Development directing the MSc Impact Evaluation for Global Development programme. Between 2021 and 2025, she was the Associate Dean Research and the Associate Dean Innovation for the Social Science Faculty. Maren has extensive experience in applied policy research having worked with the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, DC, USA and the Overseas Development Institute in London, UK as a Research Fellow in evaluation and impact assessment. She has been a guest lecturer at Chancellor College at Zomba, Malawi. She is also a 3ie Senior Research Fellow and a core team member of the Centre for Development Impact - a joint initiative between IDS, Itad and UEA. 

Maren has conducted largely quantitative but also mixed methods impact evaluations for national and international funders on a range of themes across South Asia and East Africa. She is the author of a wide range of peer-reviewed academic publications and several Campbell systematic reviews (including systematic reviews of systematic reviews) on financial inclusion, payments-by-results, immunisation programmes as well as on the link between government policies and income inequalities. She is an editor at the International Development Coordinating Group of the Campbell Collaboration and an editor of Progress in Development Studies.

Videos about Maren's research on financial inclusion can be found here.

Maren  is a specialist in quantitative impact evaluation methodologies. She has replicated the results of microfinance impact evaluations in Bangladesh, and spent extensive time in the field conducting her own microfinance evaluation in India.

She was particularly engaged in the replication of the microfinance impact evaluation published by Pitt and Khandker which can be comprehended by working through the following documents listed below:

Duvendack, M. & Palmer-Jones, R., 2012. “High Noon for Microfinance Impact Evaluations: Re-investigating the Evidence from Bangladesh.” Journal of Development Studies, 48(12):1864-1880.

The following files contain the “High Noon…” paper as well as the online appendix:

http://www.uea.ac.uk/~nga07htu/Duvendack_Palmer-Jones_2012.pdf
http://www.uea.ac.uk/~nga07htu/Duvendack_Palmer-Jones_2012_OnlineAppendix.pdf

You will need these two files to replicate the “High Noon…” paper in STATA:

http://www.uea.ac.uk/~nga07htu/PSM_Prep_all_Final.DTA (right click and choose 'Save Target As...')
http://www.uea.ac.uk/~nga07htu/HighNoonPaper_Final.do (right click and choose 'Save Target As...')

Matthieu Chemin and Mark Pitt both commented on our "High Noon..." paper and our short response to their comments can be found in JDS: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00220388.2012.747781

Further to this, Matthieu Chemin published longer comments (http://matthieuchemin-research.mcgill.ca/research.html) on our “High Noon…” paper and our response to these can be found here: http://www.uea.ac.uk/~nga07htu/Rejoinder_to_Chemin_Final.pdf

The following files are needed to comprehend and replicate the points we are making in our response to Chemin's longer comments: http://www.uea.ac.uk/~nga07htu/CheminReply.zip

Mark Pitt also published a longer comment (http://www.brown.edu/research/projects/pitt/) on our “High Noon…” paper and we respond as follows:
http://www.uea.ac.uk/~nga07htu/Rejoinder_to_Pitt_Final.pdf

The following data and code are needed to replicate the points we are making in our response to Pitt’s longer comments:
http://www.uea.ac.uk/~nga07htu/PittReply.zip

Maren is largely teaching on the MSc Impact Evaluation for Global Development and she is currently convening the module Welfare and Evaluation in Development.  She also contributes to selected postgraduate and undergraduate courses.

Quantitative impact evaluation methodologies and applied econometrics, systematic review methodologies – meta-analysis, replication and reproduction of quantitative analyses, research ethics, working with secondary data sources, e.g. DHS, LSMS etc., evaluation expertise related to especially microfinance/(digital)financial inclusion/fintech, women’s empowerment, reproductive health, agriculture, climate change, public works, education, payments-by-results. Countries: India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Afghanistan, Uganda, Ethiopia, Kenya, Ghana, Mozambique, Cambodia, Laos, Malawi, South Africa.