The wider network of trained field researchers, local analysts and country leads the Lab works through. In Europe and in the places our cases come from.
The Lab is a small core in Delft, and a much wider network beyond it. Field researchers, translators, enumerators and country leads who are already part of the settings we study, and who have been trained to the Lab's methods and ethics standard.
Almost every study we run is delivered by a mixed team: Lab-side design and analysis, network-side reach and language. The reach is the network's; the accountability sits with named people in every site.
Country leads. Researchers based in the geographies we work in, who hold the local relationships, know the regulatory context, and lead fieldwork on the ground. In East Africa, the Dutch Caribbean, Lombok and other recurring sites.
Field researchers and enumerators. Trained to run in-depth interviews and structured surveys in the language the respondent is most comfortable in. Vetted for safeguarding, cognitive checks and back-check discipline before they take an instrument to a household.
Analysts and specialists. Sector specialists (energy, mobility, water, agriculture, finance) who join a study for its analysis or as a technical reviewer. Often people whose own doctoral or applied work sits alongside the topic.
Delft-side design and management. The Lab's own team, based in Delft, designs the study, trains the field team, supervises collection, and delivers the reading.
Every engagement is scoped by the Lab and delivered with the researchers best matched to the setting. The instrument, the sample and the ethics review are designed centrally; the fieldwork is run locally.
We favour researchers who are part of the place they study. Not "visiting expertise" flown in for a week. That is where reach, language, safeguarding and trust genuinely come from, and it is what lets a study reach the households a foreign team would never see.
Recurring engagements roll into standing panels: the same researchers running the same instrument on the same population across baseline, midline and endline, so the finding is a trajectory rather than a snapshot.
For the method the network delivers on, see Field Research; for the interview craft that underpins it, see the In-Depth Interview Guide.
The network grows through referral and through direct approach. If you are a field researcher, enumerator, analyst or country lead working in the settings we cover, and you would like to be considered for future studies, get in touch with a short note about the language you work in, the geography you know, and the kind of study you have delivered before. We answer every message; we do not run rolling open calls.
If this reads close to a decision you are weighing, we would like to hear about it. A short note is enough to start.
The Lab is an independent research team, not an advocacy organisation. We do not campaign, endorse products, or accept commissions where a finding is expected in advance. Where a partner's own theory of change is what needs testing, that is a legitimate engagement, and the Lab tests it honestly.