More people are better educated, consuming more, in greater health, and living longer today than at any point in human history. However, many global challenges remain, the health of the planet one of them, and education, wealth, health, and other dimensions of human well-being are still distributed very unequally. I am an applied micro-economist interested in understanding the drivers of these inequalities and the policy- and behavioral options to address these, particularly in low- and middle income countries. My work has straddled research, policy, and teaching, sometimes in projects that combine all three, and often in multidisciplinary teams.

I am currently Professor of Economics and Managing Director of the Social Sciences Group at Wageningen University and Research (WUR). Between 2018 and 2024, I held the Chair of Global Economic Challenges at the Utrecht School of Economics, and also directed the Utrecht Centre for Global Challenges, a multidisciplinary platform where researchers, teachers, and societal stakeholders connect, experiment, and seek to confront global challenges in transformative ways through a combination of projects, transdisciplinary education, and public engagement. I was also been a member of the Utrecht University Open Science Platform. I continue to supervise several doctoral students at Utrecht University.

My research agenda has focused on addressing two global challenges: ensuring disadvantaged children have the same (early) education opportunities as everyone else, and promoting environmental sustainability. Much of it is through primary data collection, including field experiments, lab-in-the-field, and survey research, with ongoing work in Bulgaria, India, the Gambia, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda. All of it is team work. In 2018, I was part of the team being awarded the 2018 Sustainability Science Award of the Ecological Society of America, which recognizes the authors of the scholarly work (Science) that makes the greatest contribution to the emerging science of ecosystem and regional sustainability through the integration of ecological and social sciences.

Is this research influencing policy or practice? Sometimes. For example, recently the government of Bulgaria adopted a new law to make kindergartens free of charge for the poorest 40% of children. This new policy was informed and influenced by a large scale field experiment involving 5000+ children, many poor Bulgarian Roma children, in 236 communities, in collaboration with fellow researchers, the Trust for Social Achievement, the Ministry of Education, the World Bank, and 23 local NGOs.    

Before joining Utrecht University, I supported Porticus, a global philanthropy, as director for Learning and Evaluation, and worked with the World Bank as Senior Economist in its Human Development team for Eastern Europe and Central Asia. I also managed the World Bank’s Strategic Impact Evaluation Fund (SIEF), a program that aims to influence policy making in (early childhood) education, health, social protection, and WASH through solid scientific evidence. Before that I held academic positions as Assistant Professor of Economics at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM) and as postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard University economics department.

As for my studies: in 2005 I defended my PhD in Economics at Brown University, focused on gender norms and inequalities, based in part on field research among migrants moving to Nairobi's (Kenya) informal settlements and research on working couples in OECD countries. Before my PhD, a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship enabled me to travel to Kenya, India, Nepal, Mexico and Norway to explore how pastoralists are coping with globalization. This year of travel followed a liberal arts undergraduate study at St. Lawrence University, in upstate New York, which opened my appreciation of a multi-disciplinary perspective to understand and confront global challenges.