Author: Sarah Osman

If we’ve ever chatted about research and reporting, you know my gripe about evaluation reports that are never revisited. It is a missed opportunity to learn something genuinely useful about whether your organisation is actually changing anything. Across the impact sector, evaluation is often treated as a reporting obligation rather than a strategic tool. The…

Recently, I had a great conversation on the Social Norms Chat podcast about something I’ve become increasingly passionate about: how artificial intelligence can transform how we design and deliver social and behaviour change programmes. If you’re working in international development or any field where understanding human behaviour matters, this is worth paying attention to.

If I had to describe my 2025 work in one sentence, it would be this: applied social and behavioural science is moving upstream. This year I’ve worked across vaccine uptake in Cameroon, safety and accountability in nightlife settings in Georgia, and national social protection behavioural design in Rwanda, along with a number of assignments around…

Entertainment has always shaped how we see the world. In recent years, we’ve seen a real acceleration in how strategic storytelling can shift norms, spark conversations, and nudge people toward more positive behaviours. During a recent panel discussion I moderated, organized in collaboration with Robert Rippberger, I had the pleasure of speaking with Laurel Felt,…

Going into a full-blown behavioural science process is not always feasible for teams. In fact, it is not always necessarily advisable. A good first step is to review current systems and processes through a behavioural lens first. But what does it mean to ‘apply a behavioural lens’? What does that look like in practice? And…

When a social media influencer shares a conspiracy theory, it’s frustrating. But when the misinformation comes from a figure of authority (e.g. a health minister, a CEO, a political leader) it’s something else entirely. People tend to place greater trust in those with status, titles, or expertise. That trust is a heuristic that saves us…

If you work in global development, you’ve probably heard people throw around terms like Applied Behavioural Science, Social and Behaviour Change (SBC), and Behavioural Insights (BI). They all sound similar because they are: each draws on how people make decisions and behave. But they come from different traditions, use different toolkits, and are useful in…

So far this year, I’ve worked with five different teams on projects ranging from social protection to making nightlife safer. A large portion of my work involves supporting teams in understanding how they can pragmatically apply a social and behavioural science lens to their work. Having always been drawn to psychology and understanding how people…

When we run a workshop, what are we really trying to achieve? Sure, we might want to pass on information, “raise awareness” or introduce a new tool. But if we zoom out a little, the real goal is simple: we want people to do things differently afterwards. Whether it’s adopting a new process, shifting their…

About a year ago, I wrapped up a project that involved a deep dive into social and behaviour change (SBC) frameworks being used across the international development space. At the time, we were trying to make sense of all the different approaches floating around: some old, some new, many rebranded, and almost all claiming to…