Lucy Scott

Lucy Scott focuses on how social protection and livelihoods programmes can best support the poorest households. Her areas of interest include poverty dynamics, qualitative and mixed-methods research, and the cash and graduation agenda. Lucy leads OPM’s Poverty and Social Protection Practice. Her main areas of focus are; (i) research into poverty dynamics, vulnerability and social exclusion; and (ii) social protection systems strengthening, with a programmatic focus on social assistance, including economic inclusion programmes, cash-plus approaches, and shock response.

Lucy’s recent work includes:

• As an in-house regional adviser with Save the Children Australia - setting strategic direction on social protection in the Pacific, building skills, and designing cash-plus pilots to make the case for national investments in social protection.
• Directing and designing primary research to investigate gender norms and social networks in Papua New Guinea to inform a new national nutrition-sensitive child grant.
• Technical leadership advising the World Bank on how the Department of Social Services in Bangladesh can play a larger institutional role in responding to shocks.
• Research Manager for a large cross-country FCDO-funded project – Data and Evidence to End Extreme Poverty - and more recently leading the launch of a Challenge Fund for new research into poverty in Bangladesh.
• Project Director for a technical assistance programme - Expanding Social Protection in Uganda - during a period of transition between fund managers. 

Lucy holds a PhD in International Development Policy and Management from the University of Manchester and an undergraduate degree in Geography from the University of Oxford.