Abstract:
The use of Theories of Change as a practice in the conflict and peacebuilding evaluation
community has gained attention in recent years as a way to strengthen the field’s
understanding of what are the efforts that help to bring about social change and how are
they are able to do it. Within these efforts, there has been a significant focus on
deductive methods of coming up with Theories of Change; however, this has excluded
the perspectives of the project stakeholders. This research project aims to explore the
practice of cultivating the stakeholders’ perspectives on the Theories of Change through
an inductive or “bottom-up” approach which the researcher calls, Grounded Theories of
Change. In particular, it focuses on a case study of Imagine Center for Conflict
Transformation working to promote peacebuilding in the Nagorno Karabakh conflict by
implementing Track 2 level cross-border joint projects and activities with Armenian and
Azerbaijani youth.
