About
Aliya is a Research Associate at J-PAL Africa based in Johannesburg, where she collaborates with Professor Kate Orkin from the MBRG. Her work focuses on different types of interventions to address youth unemployment in South Africa. She holds an Erasmus Mundus Masters in Economic Policies for the Global Transition (EPOG+), jointly completed at Sorbonne University, the University of the Witwatersrand, the University of Turin, and SOAS. Prior to this, she completed an honours degree in Economics from the University of Cape Town. Before joining J-PAL Africa, Aliya worked as a research assistant at the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit (SALDRU) and the Institute for Economic Justice (IEJ). Her research interests include development, inequality, labour, and social protection.
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Jasmin is interested in the psychological barriers to reducing poverty and (wealth) inequality, and the relationship between empathy towards outgroups, moral circle expansion, and attitudes regarding redistribution. Her research hopes to learn about drivers and mitigators of wealth inequality, political polarisation, and segregation. Jasmin's recent work experience at the Busara Center for Behavioural Economics allowed her to design and lead research projects in East Africa (Kenya and Uganda), where she also lived for three years. Under Johannes Haushofer, Jasmin worked on studying the impact of cash transfers on mental health and well-being. Prior to that, she worked with the World Bank Group and as a data scientist for the World Data Lab. After undertaking a B.Sc. in Socio-Economics at the WU Vienna, Jasmin completed an M.A. in Development Economics at Yale University.
About
Gabriela is a Senior Research Associate at the Center of Global Development’s global education program.
Her primary research fields are development economics, economics of education, and public administration. She uses applied microeconomics and econometrics to explore and understand what works, when, and how, with the aim of informing the design and implementation of public policy.
Gabriela's research currently focuses on two topics. First, she investigates the barriers to human capital accumulation, particularly those imposed by the prevalence of violence and restrictive social norms. Second, she explores the role of incentives and non-pecuniary sources of motivation on bureaucrats’ performance.
Gabriela holds a PhD from Oxford University (2023), a MPA from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and a BSc in Economics from Universidad del Pacifico.
Contact
gsmarrelli@cgdev.org
About
Gauri is a DPhil candidate at the Blavatnik School of Government. Her research is in the field of Behavioural Economics and Public Policy. She works on policies focussed on tackling online misinformation, as well as on scalable interventions for behaviour change towards sustainable development.
Prior to starting at Oxford, she worked at the Marshall Institute, London School of Economics, conducting empirical research on the factors underlying ethical consumerism, and has experience in the social development sector, having worked at Becoming I Foundation in collaboration with Teach for India.
Contact
Email: gauri.chandra@bsg.ox.ac.uk
Desmond is currently a DPhil Student at the University of Warwick. He was a research assistant for the Mind and Behavior Research Group, based at the Blavatnik School of Government. Desmond has a Bachelor of Science Honours in Mathematics from the University of Cape Town and an MSc in Econometrics and Mathematical Economics from the London School of Economics. After a brief detour into the world of Category Theory he is back to his true calling in Development Economics. His research interests lie in behavioral and labour market interventions to increase human capital.
About
Yasmine Bekkouche joined the GEM Report team at UNESCO in 2022 as an Associate Project Officer (Research). She is a development economist whose research focuses on education quality and gender equality. In the past, she has worked with the World Bank, the European Union and the French Development Agency (AFD). She was a postdoctoral research fellow at CSAE, University of Oxford, and at ECARES (Université Libre de Bruxelles). In current projects, she studies education quality, with a focus on pre-school and primary school in Sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia. She holds a PhD in Economics and a MA in Public Policy and Development Economics from the Paris School of Economics as well as a MA in Data Science
Contact
y.bekkouche@unesco.org
Click here for Yasmine's personal website.
About
Winnie is studying for a PhD in Economics at Queen Mary University of London under the applied microeconomics research group. Her research interests are in behavioural and development economics.
Previously, she worked a research assistant in the Mind and Behaviour Research Group at the Center for the Study of African Economies (CSAE). She worked on a project that investigates whether psychological interventions can impact the take-up of preventative health investments, in particular water chlorination, and the related health and economic outcomes. She holds an MSc International Economics from Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and a Bachelor of Social Science (Economics) from the University of Malawi, Chancellor College
Contact
w.mughogho@hss22.qmul.ac.uk
About
Clémence Pougué Biyong is a DPhil student in Economics at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and Centre d’Economie de la Sorbonne. She is currently a visiting student at the Centre for the Study of African Economies (CSAE) and the Mind and Behavioural Research Group. Her research focuses on health economics and public policies. Her current projects investigate how information and behavioural biases alter the decision to invest in preventive health. Most recently, she has been working on a project in Côte d’Ivoire on drug adoption, economic uncertainty and risky health behaviour. Previously, she worked as a research assistant on decolonization land inequalities at the Institut Français de Recherche en Afrique and the French Embassy in Nairobi (Kenya). She has also worked as a policy analyst at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in the Africa unit of the Centre of Development.
She holds an MPhil in Development Economics (2018) from the Université Paris-Dauphine/PSL, and an MPhil in European Law (2017) from the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Rennes).
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About
Muhammad Meki is a development economist whose research focuses on microfinance.
He is interested in the effect of equity-like financial contracts -- involving, for example, shared ownership of fixed assets, sharing of revenue streams, or profit sharing -- on the investment and growth of small firms. Equity-based products also have the potential to serve a large number of poor Muslim entrepreneurs across the world, who are often excluded from conventional microfinance products due to the classical religious prohibition on usury. Muhammad has conducted fieldwork in Pakistan, Kenya and Bangladesh.
Prior to academia, Muhammad worked for five years as a trader in the financial markets, for Bank of America in London and Deutsche Bank in Singapore, where he traded European and Asian government bonds, foreign exchange derivatives and other fixed-income products.
Muhammad completed his DPhil in 2018 from the Department of Economics, University of Oxford (St John’s College). He was a Junior Research Fellow at Pembroke College and affiliated with the Department of Economics until 2020. Muhammad has also previously completed postgraduate degrees in finance (MSc, LSE), economics (PGDip, Cambridge), and development economics (MSc, Oxford).
Contact
Email: muhammad.meki@qeh.ox.ac.uk
Click here for personal website.
About
Ashley is an economist working on climate, cash transfers and labour markets. She currently works in the World Bank's Climate Change and Disaster Risk Management Unit for the South Asia Region as a Young Professional, and previously led a research agenda on anticipatory action for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in New York and consulted for the Centre for Disaster Protection.
Ashley completed my PhD in Economics at the University of Oxford in 2022. She remains affiliated with the University of Oxford's Centre for the Study of African Economies (CSAE) and the Mind & Behaviour Research Group.
Contact
Email: ashley.pople@economics.ox.ac.uk
