Dr Aoife O’Higgins is the Director of Evidence at Foundations: the National What Works Centre for Children and Families. She leads the centre’s research and evaluation portfolio to generate high quality actionable evidence to shape national policy and practice and ensure children and families have the relationships and support they need to thrive. The portfolio of work includes impact evaluations and evidence synthesis work on prevention, domestic abuse, child abuse and neglect, and systems change. Aoife also leads the organisation’s grant-making portfolio to identity and fund the most promising programmes for children. Aoife is also a member of the Oxford Policy Engagement Network (OPEN), where she coaches academics at Oxford developing their policy engagement.
Before joining WWCSC, Aoife was a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, and before that at the Rees Centre, University of Oxford. Aoife has also worked in the Blavatnik School of government as course convenor for the Masterclass in Statistics for Policy Makers and Evidence in Public Policy. At Oxford, her research focussed on identifying the risk and protective factors for poor educational and psychological outcomes for children with a social worker, to inform the development of evidence based social interventions. Aoife also worked in practice with children and young people in and on the edge of care for nearly 10 years.
Aoife holds an MSc Evidence Based Social Interventions from the Department of Social Policy and Interventions and a DPhil in Education from the Department of Education, University of Oxford.
