Alexandra Towns

Biography

As program director of global policy impact, Alexandra Towns drives the Keough School's strategic mission by converting research into tangible policy solutions. Her work focuses on maximizing the real-world policy impact of scholarly outputs to effectively address critical global challenges. She fosters high-impact partnerships in Washington, D.C. and in the Global South for engagement across the Keough School’s thematic and geographic areas. Towns also provides editorial and strategic direction for the school’s flagship Policy Brief Series, ensuring its role as a leading platform for translating research into high-visibility, policy-relevant insights.

Towns has extensive experience in collaborative research partnerships, applied research, policy impact and translating academic content for non-specialist audiences. Towns also has significant experience in capacity strengthening, qualitative research, leading multi-stakeholder initiatives, and developing monitoring and evaluation plans, logical frameworks, and performance indicators.

Before joining the Keough School, Towns was the senior technical advisor with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) on a $70 million program bringing together collaborative teams of practitioners, policymakers, and universities. In this role, she led the development and implementation of the embedded research translation approach for nearly 50 collaborative projects between researchers, practitioners, and policymakers around the world. Previously for CRS, Towns advised on university collaborations to improve CRS programming in more than 100 countries and led assessments on African indigenous vegetables for CRS food security programs in Madagascar, Malawi, Niger, Uganda and Zambia. Prior to CRS, Towns worked at Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the Netherlands, researching West African plant markets and African plant-based medicine for maternal and infant health in Benin and Gabon. Towns holds a doctorate from Leiden University (the Netherlands) in ethnobotany, a master’s degree in international agricultural development from the University of California, Davis and a bachelor’s degree in international development from Towson University.

Recent Work

• Publication series: Keough School Policy Brief Series (University of Notre Dame)
• Related publication: “Research Translation for International Development: A Literature Review and Framework for Evidence Use and Partner Engagement” (Progress in Development Studies)
• Blog post: The ‘3Cs’ of successful collaborative research in international development (apolitical)