jeph mathias

 My broad, nuanced vision of people, planet  and how they relate comes mostly from wide experience in diverse parts of our fabulous and flawed planet.. A generous twist of  higher education in diverse specialties adds a little extra. 

Hi! I'm Jeph- Indian/New Zealander, husband, father of four and, by dint of experience more than formal education, a specialist in complex contexts. I live with my family in Ōtautahi, Aotearoa ( Christchurch, New Zealand) and travel (often electronically) to wherever work takes me.  Genuinely trying to make a positive, if small, contribution  to this gorgeous planet and our contrary species, I  believe strongly in what I do. This introduction  includes  my formal education and some of the experiences which shape who I am, how I think and what I bring to work. You won't find my love of adventure, ideas, literature and wild places here but if we work together you'll discover some of that and I'll ask  you about your passions.

Formal Education and Positions

  • 1986 MA (Cambridge, England) Ecology/Philosophy (as Girdlers scholar)

  • 1993 BHB, MBChB (Auckland, NZ) Medical Degree

  • 1996 Dip Obs. (Otago, NZ) - Post grad. Obstetric Diploma

  • 2004 MPhil Development Studies (Massey, NZ) Distinction

  • 2004 Conservation Biology (Canterbury,NZ) at MSC level.

  • 2013 and 14- Masters papers in GIS (Massey, NZ)

  • I teach postgraduate Wilderness Medicine (Otago University, NZ)

Languages

I work in English (first language) Spanish, Portuguese and Hindi/Urdu. I have basic French and Te Reo Māori to level 4.

Professional Affiliations

I am an independent development specialist based in Ōtautahi, New Zealand. I chair the International Outcome Mapping Learning Community, am a consultant member of ANZEA (New Zealand Evaluation Association), member of the International Outcome Harvesting Forum, American Evaluation Association and Australian Evaluation Society. I'm an emergency doctor registered with the NZMC and am a Wilderness Medicine tutor for Otago University. 

I am on the boards of Delta Community Trust, which supports vulnerable people in East Christchurch and Tamborine Trust, an edgy funder which channels revenue from ethical social housing in New Zealand to social and environmental change in the Global South. Tambourine’s vision- social justice and environmental sustainability where funds come from and where they go- mirrors my own foot-on-both-sides-of-the -fence story.

Who I am.... the long read.

I'll take any human/environment  development challenge thrown at me, the more complex the better! Work with small, nimble teams in rapidly changing, dynamic contexts energises me  especially if it’s in one of our planet's difficult  to reach corners. Difficult to reach may mean geographically remote like the Amazonian rainforest or Himalayan valleys in which I have lived for many years but in today's world it often refers to spaces fenced off by social or economic barriers. Living in a Brazilian favela, a Delhi bustee, a Cambodian shanty and Calcutta slum has shown me how marginal poor corners of the human landscape are. Being an Indian teacher in an (illegal) multiracial school towards the end of apartheid in South Africa  brought me face to face with the power of discrimination and labels as 'fence' materials humans use to exclude others. A project I now work with  is  about  mentally unwell people and their families supervening stigma,  treatment gap, poverty and beliefs about psychiatric illness- formidable, socially constructed  barriers boxing them into a small, hard to reach space. It’s the right kind of. place for me. 

What qualifies me to see the nuances of social and environmental projects, to notice what is happening and what is not, to visualise creative solutions, to communicate with field staff, office staff and international offices? A life traversing a fabulous world and testing myself in its turbulent waters!  I’ve taught in apartheid South Africa, did an MA at Cambridge, volunteered at Mother Teresa’s in Kolkata, trapped crocodiles in the Amazon, was expedition doctor on Everest,  lived in a Cambodian slum, co-led the world first traverse of the Mekong, worked with MSF in Colombia’s war, implemented community health in remote Himalayan valleys, studied rare thrushes in Kenya, crossed the Darien alone, lived with Mongolian nomads…. I have significant first world experience too- running emergency departments in New Zealand, presenting at conferences, instructing  wilderness medicine and mentoring development masters students. Intense and varied experiences in totally different spaces all rolled up together is a fantastic education in “People and Planet”. This is my alma mater..

A gilded evening in the Mekong with kids from the slum in which I lived.

Along with learning from extraordinary situations I have lots of experience actually implementing development myself. Over the years I've built my experience in design, monitoring, evaluation and capacity in places as diverse as the UNFPA office In Delhi, mud floored village houses on the Tibetan Plateau,  with mental health teams in Afghanistan,  Cambodian indigenous people and leprosy field workers in Nepal. Prior to that I lived and worked in extraordinary places  muddling through myself- learning what it is like to work on community health in Cambodian slums while living in one, design and implement a malaria control programme in Colombia, live in a Himalayan valley and work with village women nutrition workers, do spinal anaesthetics and operate in tiny rural clinics in India, listen as Tibetan villagers tell of snow leopards killing their stock.... In 2022 I evaluated a prison reintegration programme in Ōtautahi, New Zealand. Current and former prisoners and corrections staff together developed evaluation questions, conducted interviews, coded and analysed on computers. Fantastic! 

Out where development theory meets real world rubber I've seen pressures of time, sketchy infrastructure or disparate personalities play out. If your project is small, you work under pressure or resources are scant I just might understand where you're coming from.  I've been there, done that.

Recreation adds importantly to who I am. Just like the emergency room alpine climbing, trans-alpine traverses and mountain biking enforce the nuances of  risk analysis, the importance of teamwork, the urgency of taking and implementing decisions. Our five month world-first  Mekong source-to-sea traverse was full of key decisions, working under stress with a team and  simply ‘gutsing out' long hard days. If my bike malfunctions  I have to rationally analyse problems and implement solutions with my own hands, do what works- just like emergency medicine. Hunting adds more intuitive, less defined skills also in hard contexts. Writing, photography and poetry are primarily about looking deeply but also learning to express what I see with creative intensity. These are all attributes I bring to my work. 

Finally, and definitely less important than my experience and even my recreation, is academic training in a number of specialties.  My Cambridge MA was in philosophy and biology. A medical degree from New Zealand, emergency medicine training and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Obstetrics is years of rigorous logical, rational thinking. Perhaps because of the real world experience I brought with me my Development Studies MPhil was awarded with distinction. It forced me to think widely and contextually and clearly articulate that.  I have masters papers in GIS and conservation and many courses in emergency medicine, development and evaluation. Being a research fellow in Development Studies at Massey University, New Zealand and presenting at international conferences further enforces academic rigour and good communication.  In development I have studied Outcome Mapping and Harvesting, complexity and utilisation focused evaluation and more recently Realist Evaluation which, at its highest level, is philosophy. I continue to educate myself via webinars, books and conferences. As with my practical experience a multi-faceted academic background lets me see the world through different lenses,  think in different ways and converse in different (academic) languages. 

That's me, an ordinary person who has learned, academically but more importantly practically,  to see the extraordinary world in many ways. I’m good at looking, listening  and delving for perspectives, spotting boundaries (what's in, what's out) and practiced in the arts of contextualisation and synthesis. I present  subtle ideas deeply but simply.  I love the work I do, the space I am in.

My keynote presentation to AUMSA medical conference, 2014 captures the essence of who I am and how I tick in an MP4. See it here. [Sorry this has been taken down now perhaps try my 2014 BMJ articles (below) or this Keynote for ANZEA 2022 which is a description of who and why I am.

Academic Publications

  • Mathias K, Mathias J, Goicolea I, Kermode,M 2017 Strengthening community mental health competence—A realist informed case study from Dehradun, North India. Health and Social Care, September 2017

  • Mathias,J 2016 "The Human Face of Inequality" British Medical Journal blog Oct 6 2016 http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2016/10/06/jeph-mathias-the-human-face-of-inequality/

  • Mathias,J and Prinsen,G. 2014 “Development as Regime Shift” Presentation in Dev-Net conference, Dunedin, New Zealand. Published in conference proceedings - .

  • Mathias,J 2014 “Guerillas in the Mist: How I met a Colombian Rebel Leader” British Medical Journal 28 July BMJ 2014;349:g4816

  • Mathias, J. 2014 “You Played at Rapid Sequence Induction while my World Burned” British Medical Journal Jan 16 2014 BMJ 2014;348:g119

  • Mathias,K. Mathias, J. Hill ,P. 2011“An Asset-Focused Health Needs Assessment in a Rural Community in North India” Asia Pac J Public Health September13, 2011 1010539511421193

  • Mathias, J. 2004 “Dialogues around Tenure Review” Development Studies Masters thesis.

  • Mathias, J., Overton.J. 2004 “Widening the Development Space” Dev-Net Conference Proceedings. Delivered at Dev-Net Conference 2004, Auckland, New Zealand.

  • Mathias, J.2002 “Selfish Genes or Selfish Development: An Ecological Perspective on Our Development Trajectory” Dev Net Conference proceedings. Presented at Dev-Net Conference 2002, Palmerston North, New Zealand. Published in conference proceedings.

Formal Presentations

  • Evaluation as Intervention- Seminar Massey University, Palmerston North Sept. 2023 Delivered Remotely

  • Actor Centred Design and Evaluation - 3 day workshop in Ōtautahi (Christchurch), April 2023

  • Facilitated OMLC Winter School in Outcome Mapping, Brussels, Dec 2022

  • Keynote Presentation New Zealand Evaluation Association Conference Wellington, October 2022.

  • “Development as Insurance” seminar at Massey University, 2022

  • Outcome harvesting webinar with Community Development 2022

  • Outcome Mapping from perspective of funder and programme Manager- international webinar, OMLC 2022

  • “Systems in Evaluation” International webinar with Bob Williams OMLC 2022

  • “Covid and Coherence. Development Questions, Big ones.”Webinar, Massey University April 15 2020

  • “Stories of Change” Nairobi Feb 2020. Two day workshop for “Leading from the South”

  • “Complexity, Developement, Systems, OM, OH and stuff like that” Melbourne Dec 2019. One day ideas workshop for TEAR Australia.

  • ‘Actor Centred Development” Brussels Dec 2019. Facilitator on 3 day International OM Winter School.

  • “Conservation as a Social Science” Interactive presentation to Masters students, Wildlife Institute of India Sept 23 2019.

  • “Time is of the Essence” Blue Marble evaluation Webinar with Michael Quinn Patton, March 5 2019 Link to the webinar

  • Complexity, OM and OH- 4 day workshop for UMN Nepal. Kathmandu, Nepal 24-27 July 2018,

  • Outcome Mapping International Training Course (OMLC) Bangkok, June 2018

  • Outcome Harvesting. Two workshops for the NZ Evaluation Association, Auckland and Wellington, New Zealand. March 2018, With Rory Jones

  • “Indigenous Identity in North East Cambodia” Pubic Lecture, Massey University, New Zealand. March 13 2018

  • Every Day Political Analysis- 1 day open workshop Phnom Penh Cambodia Dec 2017.

  • Managing Outcome Based Development 2 day open workshop Phnom Penh, Dec 2017

  • Outcome Harvesting practical training. International course delivered in Mondulkiri, Cambodia Dec 2017 with Mariam Smith

  • Outcome Mapping International training course (3 days) Mondulkiri, Cambodia Dec 2017

  • Outcome Mapping for Health and Wellbeing- two day training course Toronto, Nov 2017

  • Outcome Mapping workshop 1/2 day- American Evaluation association conference Washington DC Nov 2017

  • Outcome Harvesting with a Twist of Systems Thinking “ With Bob Williams. American Evaluation Association conference Washington DC Nov 2017

  • "Conservation as a social science" Wildlife institute of India August 2017

  • Interactive three days on "Development and Climate Change" for Masters in Transformational Development course, Kuala Lumpur April 2017

  • "Conservation as a Social Science"- interactive presentation to Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF) Bangalore Jan 2017

  • Facilitated two sessions (Monitoring and Evaluation) at International Outcome Mapping Technical course, Brussels, Dec. 2016

  • "Thinking out of the Box" 2 day workshop for UNFPA, Delhi August 2016

  • "Development in complexity" Workshop for Change Alliance, Delhi August 2016

  • Interactive session on "The Human Complexities of Conservation" for Wildlife Institute, India, Dehradun August 2016

  • Workshop "Expedition Medicine" at APTHC medical conference, Kathmandu March 2016

  • Facilitated 3 day "Development in Complexity" Workshop Massey University, Wellington New Zealand Feb 2016

  • Panel sessions on "The Use of Outcome Mapping in Cultural Conflict" and "Strengths and Weaknesses of Outcome Harvesting in Complexity" at the American Evaluation Association Conference, Chicago November 2015.

    Download the OM presentation from: http://www.outcomemapping.ca/resource/dignified-adaptation-om-and-evaluation-in-cultural-conflict

  • Mathias,J and Prinsen,G. 2014 “Development as Regime Shift” Presentation in Dev-Net conference, Dunedin, New Zealand

  • Keynote speaker at AUMSA conference Auckland, July 2014. See the presentation : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHR_dZaZO-Q

  • Mathias, J., Overton.J. 2004 “Widening the Development Space” Dev-Net Conference Proceedings. Delivered at Dev-Net Conference 2004, Auckland, New Zealand.

  • Mathias, J.2002 “Selfish Genes or Selfish Development: An Ecological Perspective on Our Development Trajectory” Dev Net Conference proceedings. Presented at Dev-Net Conference 2002, Palmerston North, New Zealand.

On top of this I have taught many courses, lectures, led workshops and run less formal presentations. I enjoy teaching, especially facilitating experiential learning.