Harsha Dayal

Ms. Dayal is the director of research and knowledge management at the Department of Planning Monitoring and Evaluation within the Presidency of South Africa, since 2012. She is currently a PhD candidate in development studies. Her initial training was in the medical sciences, when she worked for 14 years as a public health professional (1993-2007). She then migrated to the social sciences during her employment at the Human Sciences Research Council (2007-2014). She holds a diploma cum laude in monitoring and evaluation (2012) and a master’s degree in public health (2009). Ms. Dayal conducted research on democracy and governance, developmental states, poverty alleviation, public health, gender and disability. She developed various strategies to bridge between researchers and policy-makers in brokering data, research and evaluation evidence to inform policy impact. She introduced evidence mapping and synthesis methodology in the public sector to advance policy-relevant research and strategic knowledge brokering. This led to the development of processes, systems and infrastructure to build public sector research capacity. Ms. Dayal has over 15 years’ experience as a research manager, 10 years of which have been in the science-policy interface. She serves on several national and international advisory bodies.