James Mkandawire is the Research Director at Invest in Knowledge (IKI) responsible for overseeing data collection for many large health and social studies conducted throughout Malawi. Since 2004, he has been actively involved in various roles on several longitudinal studies on HIV such as the Malawi Diffusion and Ideational Change Project), the Malawi Longitudinal Study of Families and Health and the Likoma Network Study. Since 2012, he been the Research Director of IKI after being an under study Deputy Research Director for 3 years. James has held management and supervisory roles for studies funded by the National Institute of Health, the World Bank, and Innovations for Poverty Action, Rockwool Foundation, and USAID. As the IKI Director, he negotiates contracts with clients, develops proposals for new business and oversees all departments and personnel involved on any project being implemented at IKI. He ensures that all research projects carried out by IKI are successfully implemented and results disseminated to local researchers, policymakers and governmental officials. He leads on ethics approval processes and also leads on training of research staff in research ethics. He has an in-depth knowledge of the local cultural context and fluent in a number of local languages and Chichewa, the predominant local language in Malawi. This makes it possible for him to work anywhere in Malawi. James has managed very large projects funded by USAID and the World Bank and is very much conversant with data quality and financial management protocol required by these development partners. He has a number of publications under his name and in collaboration with other researchers.
James is comfortable working with Stata, Nvivo and Dedoose with some loose knowledge of R when it comes to data management and analysis. He always brings a grounded understanding of the local context to projects.