Alisa Zomer
Research Affiliate
email azomer@mit.edu
Alisa Zomer is a research affiliate focused on engaged scholarship and translating evidence into practice. She was previously the Assistant Director at the MIT Governance Lab helping to shape the lab’s growth and strategy. With prior experience at Yale University and the World Resources Institute, Alisa’s research interests focus on environmental law and policy, climate change governance, urban sustainability, and international development.
Projects
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News June 2025
[TICTeC] How can AI and Civic Tech Build Consensus for Climate Policy and Include the Voices of Future Generations?
The MIT GOV/LAB team hosted a workshop at TICTeC where participants had a chance to test out a new online deliberation tool and talk to someone from 2048.
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News September 2024
Can Trustworthy AI Improve Governance and Trust? AI Trends, Biases, & Gaps
MIT GOV/LAB is interested in the rising use of AI tools in governance, how AI use impacts trust between government and citizens, and the growing gap in AI models and policy in the Global South.
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News July 2024
Unpacking Political Protest: Q&A with Busara’s Gideon Too on Kenya’s #RejectFinanceBill2024
Gideon Too, Associate Vice President at Busara, provides insights on the current protests in Kenya against the 2024 Finance Bill. These have turned violent, with protesters being killed and abducted by state security forces. He explains why this is a watershed moment for the country’s democracy, and what behavioral science can add to our understanding of political protest and citizen engagement.
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Projects April 2024
Technology and Governance
This emerging suite of projects focuses on the intersection of government, technology, and trust-building, with a close look at public innovation technologies, civic tech, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.
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Projects April 2024
Trust in Government
Here is an overview of our work on trust in government, which is central to our research agenda and a critical component for achieving citizen engagement and government accountability.
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Projects May 2020
Public Health Policy and Behavior
Research projects with practitioner partners focused on public health issues and crises, including the Covid-19 pandemic and the Ebola epidemic.
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Resources November 2022
Trust Mini Guide
A mini guide on “trust” —why it matters and how we measure it at MIT GOV/LAB, including sample survey questions and measurement tools— for partners and researchers working in governance and international development.
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Resources October 2022
Crowdsourcing Content to Improve Vaccine Confidence and Uptake in the Global South
Busara-MIT GOV/LAB case study assessing what types of messaging and messengers are the most effective in increasing Covid-19 vaccine confidence and uptake.
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Projects October 2021
Practitioner-In-Residence
MIT GOV/LAB's practitioner-in-residence program provides resources for practitioner partners to share lessons learned and explore new research ideas.
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Resources September 2022
Busara-MIT GOV/LAB Blog Book
A compilation of twelve original lab in the field research designs summaries and bios from the inaugural Busara - MIT Behavioral Science in the Field course.
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Resources June 2022
MIT GOV/LAB’s Engaged Scholarship Model
Evidence in Governance and Politics features MIT GOV/LAB’s Engaged Scholarship Model as part of their series on academic/practitioner models.
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Projects May 2020
Data to Inform the Pandemic Response (Covid-19)
How can social science research provide rapid inputs to public health crises? Our team is working with partners to produce data and evidence to inform pandemic responses.
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Resources October 2020
Risk and Equity Matrix
An exercise for practitioner-academic research teams to systematically consider potential impacts for the range of actors involved in the research process.
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Research May 2020
Preliminary Results from Rapid Survey to Inform Covid-19 Response in Sierra Leone
Research brief with initial results from MIT GOV/LAB's collaboration with the Institute for Governance Reform and the Government of Sierra Leone to inform Covid-19 policy.
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Resources October 2020
Updated Guide: How to Have Difficult Conversations
This document is meant to provide guidance on how to have “difficult conversations” that often arise when academic researchers and practitioners decide to collaborate.
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Resources October 2020
Grassroot: Understanding the Big Picture
This learning case provides an honest reflection on the challenges and successes of MIT GOV/LAB's research collaboration with Grassroot in South Africa.
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Projects February 2018
Transparent: Testing Access to Information and Government Responsiveness
MIT GOV/LAB is partnering with civil society to test access to information laws at the local level and better understand what motivates bureaucrat behavior on transparency.
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Resources February 2020
Teaching on WhatsApp: Leadership and Storytelling for Grassroots Community Organizers
A how to guide for designing and delivering an interactive training course through online messaging.
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Research February 2020
A Novel Approach to Civic Pedagogy: Training Grassroots Organizers on WhatsApp
Research results from a collaborative project with Grassroot, a civic technology organization based in South Africa.
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Resources August 2019
How to have difficult conversations / a practical guide for academic-practitioner research collaborations
This document is meant to provide guidance on how to have “difficult conversations” that often arise when academic researchers and practitioners decide to collaborate.
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Projects December 2017
Data Science to Solve Social Problems
GOV/LAB's Data Science to Solve Social Problems seminar series brings together researchers and practitioners to discuss technical solutions to "real world" social problems.
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Resources November 2018
Exploring Civic Leadership Training with Partners in the Philippines
This learning case provides a summary of MIT GOV/LAB's research collaboration with partners in the Philippines.
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Resources October 2018
Navigating Access to Information with Twaweza and MIT GOV/LAB
This learning case provides a summary of MIT GOV/LAB's research collaboration with Twaweza on access to information.
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Projects November 2016
Access Denied? Testing Freedom of Information Laws in East Africa
To investigate whether citizens can access public information and exercise their rights, MIT GOV/LAB is partnering with Twaweza to determine the success or failure rates of information requests at local district offices.
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News September 2022
MITx Case Study: From Data to Covid-19 Policy in Sierra Leone
Updated MITx course focusing on cities and Covid-19 features a case study on our research collaboration in Sierra Leone.
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News September 2022
A Partnership to Teach: Training the Next Generation of Behavioral Scientists with Busara and MIT GOV/LAB
MIT GOV/LAB and Busara's work training the next generation of behavioral scientists.
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News June 2022
[Integration and Implementation Insights] Clarifying Incentives and Expectations in Research Collaborations
Integration and Implementation Insights features a new blog on how to manage incentives and expectations in research collaborations.
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News June 2022
[Integration and Implementation Insights] Managing Risk and Equity in Collaborative Research
Integration and Implementation Insights features a new blog on how to manage risk and equity when conducting research programs with stakeholders.
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News July 2021
Relationships Between the Formal and Informal Sector: An Exploratory Survey
We asked members of organizations working on issues related to the informal sector about how they worked with informality and how Covid-19 impacted this work.
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News April 2021
Exploratory Survey: Governance of the Informal Sector during Covid-19
New exploratory research seeks to understand the relationship between people and government during the pandemic, specifically in informal contexts — conceived broadly as communities and activities existing and operating outside formal government regulations or legal frameworks.
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News November 2020
EdX Case Study: From Data to Covid-19 Policy in Sierra Leone
A new online EdX course focusing on cities and Covid-19 features a case study on our research collaboration in Sierra Leone.
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News September 2020
[WZB Magazine] Taking Behavioral Science to the Field in Kenya
Training the next generation of scholars in behavioral science from a Global South perspective.
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News August 2020
[MIT News] The Promise of Using WhatsApp for Low-tech Distance Learning
Teaching community organizers via WhatsApp yields encouraging results in South Africa, according to MIT Governance Lab research.
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News May 2020
How to Teach Grassroots Organising and Leadership on WhatsApp
Our work with Grassroot, teaching community organisers on WhatsApp, was featured on the Mobilisation Lab site.
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News September 2019
Solving the World
A quick look at the teams selected for MIT Solve's Community-Driven Innovation Challenge —technology solutions from Brazil, Colombia, Nigeria, and Mexico.
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News July 2019
What's Next for MIT GOV/LAB?
One outcome of our strategic review is a renewed commitment to conducting rigorous research that is co-created by practitioners and grounded in local problems.
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News July 2019
Getting to the Grassroot, Leadership Development through Storytelling on WhatsApp
A technology platform in South Africa enables community organizers to mobilize more people; next is supporting them to mobilize better.
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News April 2019
Designing Social Impact Metrics for Civic Technology
Bringing together partners from the US (POPVOX) and South Africa (Grassroot), we tested a new format to co-develop metrics and civic technology in an iterative design process.
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News August 2018
India Unheard: Community Journalists Turned Activists Take on Rural Issues
Uncut scenes from field work in Jharkhand and Bihar, India and supporting research with Video Volunteers and Professor Gabi Kruks-Wisner (MIT PhD ‘13) from the University of Virginia.
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News November 2018
How to Create a Positive Feedback Loop between Citizens and Government? It’s Not Easy.
We took a look at Accountability Lab’s Citizen Helpdesks in Nepal to understand how the project is working on the ground.
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News March 2018
Twaweza learns, and so do we
A few highlights from Twaweza’s Evidence and Ideas event where MIT GOV/LAB presented research on elections and access to information in East Africa.
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News April 2018
‘Accountability without Democracy’ in the New York Times
Professor Lily Tsai’s seminal work on China was featured in connection with President Xi’s consolidation of power and the end of presidential term limits.
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News May 2018
Coming Clean, Using Data Science to Address Wrongful Convictions
Bringing together legal strategies and data science, ACLU Massachusetts presented at our seminar series on one of the largest criminal justice scandals in Bay State history.
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News June 2018
Layered Authority: Beyond Binaries and 'Good Governance'
Report back from the Program on Governance and Local Development’s (GLD) Second Annual Conference at the University of Gothenburg, May 31-June 1, 2018.
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News August 2018
Re-Imagining the Future of Human Rights with Dejusticia
Our partner Dejusticia brought together eighteen young human rights defenders from the Global South to learn new skills, build community, and take a break.
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News January 2018
Cleaning House — Experimental Evidence on Improving Citizen Engagement in the Philippines
High-level findings from our Making All Voices Count research on civic leadership training for the 'poorest of the poor' in the Philippines.
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News January 2018
Naming and faming (not shaming) to hold public officials accountable
Accountability Lab and Integrity Idol featured in The Economist, with mention of MIT GOV/LAB’s preliminary research on the program.
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News March 2017
Taking the Mystery out of Access to Information in Kenya
MIT GOV/LAB and Twaweza sent "mystery shoppers" to 45 of 47 counties across Kenya to request public information from local government offices.
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News May 2017
Is Civic Tech Fulfilling its Promise?
Report back from #TICTeC 2017, where GOV/LAB presented on a suite of civic technology research projects in collaboration with the Omidyar Network.
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News October 2017
Asking Why: Politics and Voting in Kenya
We gathered more than 200 interviews across Kenya to inform an experiment running up to the 2017 national elections.