March 28 through April 1, 2026 | San Francisco, CA, USA

Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) will join researchers, policymakers, and practitioners at the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) 2026 Conference, to be held in San Francisco, California from March 28-April 1. This year's conference theme is "Re-examining Education and Peace in a Divided World." IPA staff will present in eleven sessions, sharing insights on topics such as:

• Scaling national education reforms
• Strengthening monitoring, evaluation, and learning systems
• Building experimentation capacity in EdTech
• Supporting children’s well-being in crisis contexts
• Advancing two-generation approaches to poverty reduction
• Understanding how socio-emotional skills shape economic empowerment
• Institutionalizing evidence use within ministries of education

See the full CIES 2026 Conference online program here.

March 28 | 9:45 to 11:00am PDT

Panel session: School Violence Prevention: Data, Evidence and Implementation of Interventions in Sub-Saharan Africa

Featuring David K. Evans (Center for Global Development), Gabriela Smarrelli (Center for Global Development), Vianney Mbonigaba (IPA), Sarah Kabay (IPA)

IPA presentation: Collaborating with Ministries of Education around data and evidence to end violence in and around schools

March 28 | 11:15 to 12:30pm

Panel session: Thriving Through Play: Advancing education and peace by supporting children's psychosocial wellbeing in fragile contexts

Featuring Maria Jose Torres (IPA), Grace Boutros (Amna – Refugee Healing Network), Kyra Pedersen (War Child Alliance), Myuri Komaragiri (Right to Play), Anne Gitimu (Amref Health Africa), Amelie Loro (IPA)

IPA presentation: Innovations for Poverty Action: Play as a mechanism for children to thrive

Panel session: Advancing two-generation programs in refugee contexts: MEL tools and approaches

Featuring Manuel Bustamante (IPA), Kavita Rajagopalan (Global Schools Forum), Nehyi Paola Quintero Pinilla (Soluciones integrales para la primera infancia)

IPA presentation: Supporting implementers to build actionable Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning systems for two-generation programs in refugee contexts

Panel session: A/B testing: Structured learning and iteration for program improvement in education

Featuring Claire Cullen (Youth Impact), Noam Angrist (Youth Impact; What Works Hub for Global Education, University of Oxford), Doug Johnson (IDinsight), Andres Parrado (IPA), Banishwar Singh (Pratham Education Foundation), Sania Salman (Mulago Foundation), Clio Dintilhac (BMGF)

IPA presentation: Building Organizational Capacity for A/B Testing in EdTech

Panel session: Reimagining government, donor, researcher and practitioner partnerships for educational transformation at scale

Featuring Scott James McInnes (UK FCDO), Emily Gray (FCDO), Karla Petersen (IPA), Ashleigh Gillwald Morrell (TaRL Africa), Hafsatu Hamza (TaRL Africa)

IPA presentation: Designing for scale: using scalability assessments to support government-led scaling

March 28 | 1:15 to 4:00pm

Workshop: Strategic Costing for Education Impact: From Analysis to Implementation

Featuring Shahana Hirji (IPA), Elizabeth Brown (CEGA / UC Berkeley), Jessica Williams (J-PAL Global)

March 29 | 4:30 to 5:45pm

Panel session: Is Secondary Education Building the Skills Youth Need for Success Later in Life?

Featuring Meghan C Mahoney (Educate!), Jenna Grzeslo, Smita Das (IPA / World Bank), Sarah Kabay (IPA), John Mugo (Zizi Afrique Foundation)

IPA presentation: How Can Socio-Emotional Skills be Developed for Economic Empowerment?

Paper session: Building Foundations for Equity and Peace: Early Learning, Evidence, and System Reform

Featuring Jun Kawaguchi (Keio University), Tanvi Bhambry (Pratham Education Foundation), Dropti Sharma (Pratham Education Foundation), Frederick Birikorang (Ghana Education Service), Henry Atimone (IPA), Isaac Kwadwo Yeboah (Ghana Education Service Headquarters), Xinmin Zhao (East China Normal University), Jia Li (East China Normal University)

IPA and Ghana Education Service (GES) presentation: Bridging Evidence and Policy: Lessons from Scaling Differentiated Learning in Ghana

March 30 | 2:45 to 4:00pm

Roundtable session: Digital Learning, Global Competencies, and Equity: Innovations, Evidence, and Policy Perspectives

Featuring Ben Tan (IPA), Liping Yang (University of Miami), Yuxin Zhong (University of South Florida)

IPA presentation: From startup to scale: building evidence capabilities with a stage-based framework

Panel session: Can two generation approaches generate breakthrough outcomes for the most vulnerable children? Research in Uganda and Ethiopia

Featuring Sarah Kabay (IPA), Varsha Ashok (Busara Center for Behavioral Economics), KanuPriya Jhunjhunwala (Children in Crossfire), Rafiath Rashid (BRAC International), David K. Evans (Center for Global Development)

IPA presentation: Two Generation Research and Learning

April 1 | 2:45 to 4:00pm

Panel session: Global Evidence Architecture: consolidating a fragmented landscape

Featuring Ines Charro (Jacobs Foundation), Patrick Okwen (Effective Basic Services [eBASE] Africa), Juan Hernandez-Agramonte (IPA), Samuel Kembou (Jacobs Foundation)

IPA presentation: Building Better Systems for Evidence with EdLabs