Christine Oliver

Biography

For over 30 years, Christine has led a wide range of research projects with a particular focus on identifying evidence-based and actionable recommendations for systems change.

Christine is currently Head of Research for the Kusuma Trust UK (KTUK) where her work has focused on improving children’s access to quality secondary education in India and in areas of educational underachievement in the UK. She has developed Kusuma’s evidence base from scratch, commissioning and managing research and evaluations of high quality and practical relevance to programmes funded by the Trust in India and the UK. Christine has been instrumental in securing the partnership of J-PAL South Asia to evaluate the scale-up of Kusuma’s innovative remedial education programme for young people in government secondary schools in Odisha, India. This RCT, which is currently underway, is potentially of national and global significance.

Before joining the Trust, Christine worked as a senior researcher at the Institute of Education, University College London where she managed a wide range of studies on the lives of children and young people in and outside the family. Her evidence reviews on the effectiveness of early interventions informed the launch of the Sure Start programme and her research on the impact of family breakdown on children’s well-being contributed to a shift in policy towards greater support for parents during separation. She led the first national study on child advocacy which led to a change in the law, giving children in public care a legal entitlement to an advocate.

Early in her research career, Christine worked as a consultant specialising in strategies to reduce violence against minority ethnic and LGBT communities, and to promote gender equality. Christine received a Masters Degree from Essex University and a PhD from the Institute of Education, University College London, on child advocacy.