Julius Nyangaga about using SNA to understand innovation systems

Dr Eva Schiffer recently took us (a group of researchers from the International Livestock Research Institute, ILRI) through an introductory session to Social Network Analysis – the concept, the methodologies, its application.  Most of us were from the innovation side of the research world where qualitative constructs and processes in systems are easily appreciated. But [...]

How does a research assistant become director general?

This was one question that my participants at the ILRI Net-Map workshop chose to map out in a group activity to learn how the method works. I must admit, they didn’t find a simple answer in their one hour speed mapping session. Maybe because we were pressed for time and I didn’t allow them to [...]

Learning by doing

I have just finished teaching my first 5 day “General Introduction to Social Network Analysis” course at the International Livestock Research Institute in Kenya. I must say, I was a bit nervous before I arrived, because I knew I would interact with a group of researchers interested to be trained in a method and (maybe) [...]

Sorry to everyone looking for animals

Strange, how the use of certain phrases might send people to your blog, who are definitely not here because of the network analysis. For weeks now I observe that the most common search term that sends people to my blog is “different kinds of animals”, just because some weeks back I said that different kinds [...]

Ready to roll!

Tomorrow I will start another one of these crazy trips around the world, carrying my Net-Map toolbox to places as far apart as Kenya (to give a training in Social Network Analysis at the International Lifestock Research Institute, ILRI), India (to be part of a team evaluating the impact of World Bank activities on agricultural [...]

Visualyzer on Vista

My younger sister once said that one thing she admires in men (well, most of them) is that when it comes to solving a technical problem, they are like pitbulls, once they have sunk their teeth in this problem, they won’t let go until they are done with it. My partner showed this pitbull like [...]

Ethnicity and Power

One comment on my post about messy realities was that the role of ethnicity might be crucial to understand the power mix within and between institutions. While thinking about different (methodological) ways of including ethnicity into Net-Maps while drawing them (for example using differently colored post-its), I suddenly think of an old post of mine [...]

Dealing with messy realities

After pre-testing Net-Map to apply it to Bolivian policy processes, one troubling learning experience followed me for some days. Imagine a political system (and I am not necessarily talking about Bolivia here, because I have seen similar systems all over the world) where the power of different actors is determined by a mix of their [...]