James Copestake is Professor of International Development at the University of Bath. His research interests include rural development and agrarian change; development finance, microfinance and aid management; definition and measurement of well-being and poverty; and the global political economy of development. James was Principal Investigator for the ESRC-DFID funded ‘Assessing Rural Transformations’ (ART) project. The ART consortium includes Evidence for Development alongside the University of Bath, Gorta Self Help Africa and Farm Africa, and seeks to broaden the range of credible and cost-effective evaluation methodologies available for assessing rural development interventions in complex contexts.