Meet a TReNDS Expert: Tom Moultrie
Written by TReNDS Staff
In the Meet TReNDS series, we introduce you to TReNDS' experts, staff, and friends–leading individuals and organizations in the broader data for development community.
Meet...
TReNDS expert Tom Moultrie, Professor of Demography, University of Cape Town, South Africa
About Tom
Tom is an academic demographer whose recent work has focused on assessing and enhancing the quality of public data – particularly censuses – in developing countries to improve the evidence base for measuring and monitoring progress towards meeting the SDGs.
Q&A
TReNDS Staff: In your career, what area of data for development have you primarily focused on?
Tom Moultrie: Improving the usefulness of census data for development planning.
What emerging area of data for development are you most eager to tackle in your own work?
Developing new approaches to integrate and harmonise new data forms to allow accurate estimation at small areas. [Get more insights from Tom on new, data-driven approaches to population monitoring here.]
What emerging area of data for development are you most eager to see addressed by the community at large?
An acceptance that partnerships, collaborations, and longer-term interdependence between old and new owners and providers of data is essential to move the project forward.
What is the most interesting use of data you've seen?
A study on mapping commuter routes in Ghana (by Accra Mobility).
What are you most eager to engage in with TReNDS?
A cross-disciplinary group of people with very diffuse foci, but all committed to enhancing data and statistical methods in the service of global development.
Check out some of Tom’s past work below:
Who might be left behind in the SDGs (SDSN TReNDS)
Monitoring the SDGs by Means of the Census (SDSN TReNDS)