Mike Richards - Anthropologist, Development Consultant, and Children’s Book Author - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. - LinkedIn Profile

Michael holds a PhD in anthropology and has worked for over 30 years in international development project design and evaluation—principally in education, health, and agricultural development. Incorporating quantitative and qualitative methodologies, with added geo-spatial analyses where relevant, he has developed large monitoring and evaluation platforms for governments and large international donor organizations (USAID, mostly).

He also works with universities, NGOs, and community organizations, combining teaching with participatory research activities. He also maintains a passion for developing illustrated children’s books and apps based on community stories in Latin America and Africa.

Professional Skills: 

Survey research, sampling design and statistics; experimental research design; ethnography and analytical ethnology; participatory research; applied linguistics and geo-linguistics; agricultural economics; epidemiology and biostatistics; ethnoscience.

Teaching/training skills: University courses in general anthropology, medical anthropology, economic anthropology, sociolinguistics, and research methods. For non-degreed project technical team members, I have lead participatory research activities in ethnoscience inquiry, sociolinguistic investigation, and household surveys.

Project management skills: proposal writing, project design/implementation, technical stewardship, knowledge management, process monitoring, basic research, evaluation, communications,

Language Skills:  English and Spanish—Native fluency; Portuguese—advanced; Mayan languages of Guatemala (three)

Previous Clients:

USAID/Liberia and MCC/Liberia for Mission-wide monitoring, evaluation, geo-spatial and basic research services.

USAID/Guatemala for monitoring and evaluation of agricultural and nutritional programs.

UN (WHO) for medical anthropology); (UNDP) for ethnic theme and linguistic research for education; (UNICEF) for culturally pertinent education curriculum development and bilingual language assessment.

CDC for ethnomedical research in vector-borne disease phenomena and labor migration as a transmission factor Universidad del Valle de Guatemala (for country-wide language atlas project)

World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, Millenium Challenge Corporation and others, but mostly USAID.