Stefan Dercon is Professor of Economic Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government and the Economics Department, and a Fellow of Jesus College. He is also Director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies.Prior to this, he was Chief Economist of the Department of International Development (DFID), the government department in charge with the UK’s aid policy and spending. In this position, he provided strategic advice, and was responsible for ensuring the use of evidence in decision making. He has held positions at the University of Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), the Catholic University of Leuven, and WIDER (Helsinki), part of the United Nations University.
His research interests concern what keeps some people and countries poor: the failures of markets, governments and politics, mainly in Africa, and how to achieve change. Current research work focuses on the psychological challenges of poverty, the political economy of development, the challenges of industrialisation in Africa, the challenges and opportunities of new technologies, and how to organise and finance responses to natural disasters and protracted humanitarian crises. In 2018, the Queen awarded him as an honorary Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) for services to economics and international development. Dercon received his PhD in Economics from Oxford University.
Sonalde Desai (Distinguished University Professor Emerita, Department of Sociology, University of Maryland and Professor and Centre Director, NCAER-National Data Innovation Centre, New Delhi) is a demographer whose work deals primarily with social transformation and its impact on the lives of individuals with a focus on education, employment, gender, and maternal and child health.
She leads the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) of over 40,000 households, one of the few national panel surveys in India providing a rich and free public resource for studying the transformation of the Indian society in the 21st century between 2004 and 2024. Desai has published extensively in Indian and international journals and served on editorial boards of several major journals. She is a frequent contributor to Indian English language newspapers.
Desai received a Ph.D. from Stanford University and post-doctoral training at the University of Chicago and RAND Corporation. Desai was elected President of Population Association of America for 2022 and has been named a Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Anil Deolalikar has been Founding Dean of the School of Public Policy since February 2013 and a Professor of Economics at UC Riverside since 2003. Prior to this he taught at the University of Washington, University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University. He is a development economist who has published extensively on the economics of child nutrition, health, education, poverty, and social protection in developing countries. In addition to his research, Deolalikar has extensive public policy experience and has served as an adviser to the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, UNDP, USAID, and a number of developing country-governments and international organizations.
Deolalikar received his PhD in Economics from Stanford University, a Diploma in Economics from Cambridge University and a BA in Economics from Harvard University.
