Sara Van Belle

Sara Van Belle is a political scientist and anthropologist who has been active in development policy, implementation, evaluation and research for just about 20 years. She’s currently mainly involved with research on governance and accountability, now focusing on health systems and sexual and reproductive health. She is also interested in evaluation methodology – specifically theory-driven and realist evaluation. She lectures health policy and systems research, and health policy and governance at the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Belgium and SciencesPo in Paris, France. Sara has field experience in 11 African countries and lived in Senegal. She worked for multilateral and bilateral aid agencies as well as for INGOs. She was a senior governance advisor at BTC, developing programmes on governance and institutional strengthening in multiple sectors, and worked for UNFPA West Africa Office and MSI.

She is currently a senior research fellow and lecturer at the faculty of public health and policy of the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium (ITM) and a honorary assistant professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). She is also connected to the Institute of Public Health in Bangalore, India as adjunct faculty.