Matthew Gallagher manages the research of the Dreamscape Learn team, a university initiative and project that makes use of immersive storytelling, virtual reality, and scalable technologies to engage learners.
Prior to his current work, he was a research and evaluation consultant for Arizona State University’s Education for Humanity program. There, he studied the effectiveness of providing ASU's online offerings to refugees, displaced populations, and communities affected by displacement. Matthew holds a Doctorate degree in Community Resources and Development from Arizona State University and a Master’s degree in Poverty Reduction and Development Management from the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom.
Matthew was also the Evaluation Lead for the Information and Media Practice at IREX. There, he managed all evaluation activities for approximately 30 USAID-funded programs. These activities include the proper development and implementation of all monitoring, evaluation, and learning processes and practices across all program phases. These include collaboratively developing monitoring and evaluation plans, learning plans, performance plans, performance indicators, and data collection tools with local staff in over 15 countries.
Matthew worked at Peace Corps Headquarters in Washington, DC as a Management Analyst in the Office of Strategic Information, Research, and Planning, beginning in October 2010. He was a member of the evaluation team tasked with measuring the impact of Peace Corps activities from the perspective of host country nationals that live and work with Peace Corps Volunteers, as well as analyzing and documenting the agency’s performance and effectiveness via the Peace Corps Strategic Plan. In February 2013, Matthew joined the Peace Corps’ Europe, Mediterranean, and Asia Region as the office’s first Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist. While providing M&E and data analysis support to the Region, his main focus was providing M&E support to 19 countries in such areas as project framework design, data collection tool development, data analysis, and the ongoing training of each country’s M&E Specialist. He was also a member of the agency’s M&E Taskforce, which was empaneled to develop recommendations and guidelines to improve and re-align the Peace Corps’ M&E system, and received the Peace Corps Director’s Meritorious Award for his work in 2015.
Prior to his work with the Peace Corps, Matthew was the lead evaluator for the Planning, Policy, and Evaluation Office with the Administration for Native Americans (ANA) for four years. As the first evaluator hired by ANA, Matthew designed and created the agency’s evaluation tools, including a participatory approach for gathering appropriate qualitative and quantitative data from project participants in all grant areas. During his tenure at ANA, Matthew managed the monitoring and evaluation studies for 101 Native American community development projects in 21 states and territories. His findings were published annually in the Impact and Effectiveness of Development Projects in Indian Country Report, and submitted to Congress from 2006 through 2009. In 2009, Matthew received the Assistant Secretary of the Administration for Children and Family’s 2009 Organizational Team Achievement Award for his team’s work in Impact Evaluation.
Prior to his work at ANA, Matthew served as a Peace Corps Volunteer for two years on the islands of Grenada and Carriacou from 1998-2000, where he was a classroom teacher.