Elizabeth Hoffecker is a social scientist who researches and evaluates processes of local innovation and systems change in the context of addressing global development challenges. She directs the MIT Local Innovation Group, an interdisciplinary research group housed at the Sociotechnical Systems Research Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US, where she has held the position of research scientist since 2017.
Elizabeth’s work focuses on developing and putting into use methods for understanding, assessing, and learning from change processes in complex systems, or what she calls 'complexity-aware' approaches to evaluation. She develops and uses these approaches to evaluate complex, system-level interventions into complex local systems such as agricultural systems, innovation systems, and educational systems, with current projects in northern India and Guatemala.
Over the past ten years, Elizabeth has led a portfolio of research projects across five continents and has translated insights from her research into teaching at multiple levels, from undergraduates to professionals. She is a co-creator of the Lean Research approach for improving the experience of research participants in international development and humanitarian work and is a 2019 recipient of MIT’s Infinite Mile Award for Innovation and Creativity.