Tara Polzer Ngwato

Tara Polzer Ngwato is a Director at Social Surveys Africa, one of the region’s preeminent social policy and research companies, based in Johannesburg, South Africa. She has twenty years of experience designing, managing and conducting research on a wide range of social development topics, with thematic focus areas in human migration and mobility; conflict transformation, social cohesion and violence early warning; traditional and informal community (self)governance systems; and near-mining communities. Her methodological expertise ranges across all the main forms of qualitative and quantitative and mixed approaches, with particular interests in participatory and adaptive M&E and data literacy training. She has a particular interest in the effective communication of research findings and the use of research as a tool for achieving social transformation and informing strategic decision-making. Her prior experience includes being Head of Research for the Royal Bafokeng Administration, a traditionally governed near-mining community in South Africa. She also spent ten years as Senior Researcher at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg with the African Centre for Migration & Society researching xenophobic violence and Zimbabwean migration and teaching postgraduate migration studies courses. Prior to Wits, Polzer Ngwato worked with Transparency International and the GTZ. She has also consulted widely for South African, African and global organisations including UNHCR, UN OCHA and the IFRC. Polzer Ngwato is widely published and holds a PhD and an MSc in Development Studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a BA in Social and Political Sciences from Cambridge University.