projects
[1] Planning for Productive Migration (PPM) in Niger With Jeremy Weinstein (Harvard), Darin Christensen (UCLA), Allison Grossman (Tulane), Jessica Sadye Wolff (Stanford, IPL), and Jon Kurtz (Mercy Corps)
Description
In collaboration with Mercy Corps and Stanford's Immigration Policy Lab (IPL), the Planning for Productive Migration (PPM) innovation is a holistic program designed to support households in exploring utilizing domestic and regional temporary migration opportunities to diversify livelihoods. It includes access to advice on employment opportunities, information on legal rights and requirements and network ties in destination markets, facilitation of household planning to ensure collective decision-making, support to secure requisite paperwork, advice on low-cost remittance transfers, soft skills training, cash to cover the cost of travel, and support for migrants while away from home. Overall, our research activities seek to generate evidence around how to increase the uptake of internal and regional migration opportunities, maximize the returns to migration for individuals and families, and promote safer migration by mitigating key risks.[2] Evaluating scalable approaches to reducing sexual violence towards children in Liberia With Alex Hartman (UCL) and Cecilia Mo (UC Berkeley)
Description
Funded by the Fund for Innovation in Development (FID), this collaborative project seeks to develop and evaluate an innovative child protection program to minimize risks of transactional sex involving children and sexual violence towards children in Liberia. The intervention, implemented by World Hope International (WHI), consists of a child-friendly flipchart and associated curriculum delivered to middle school children, teachers, and staff, focusing on bodily autonomy, identifying inappropriate behavior, and how to report incidents. This curriculum is supplemented by activities to improve both schools' and communities' ability to prevent and respond to sexual violence towards children (including, but not limited to, transactional sex). Using an RCT study design, we are evaluating WHI's activities on children's awareness of sexual violence and victimization, as well as communities' norms regarding transactional sex with minors.[3] Disrupted Aid, Displaced Lives: Unraveling the Impact of Refugee Funding Cuts in Uganda With Yang-Yang Zhou (Dartmouth) and Shelby Carvalho (Harvard)
Description
Funded by the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, Innovations for Poverty Action’s Lab Displaced Livelihoods Initiative(DLI), Penn Global Research and Engagement Grant Program, and in collaboration with UNHCR, this project studies the effects of a dramatic drop in the level of support for refugees. In the summer of 2023, UNHCR and the World Food Programme (WFP) launched a new policy in Uganda that reduces unconditional cash and in-kind transfers for 1.5 million refugees. We are using an innovative regression discontinuity study design to evaluate the effects of these aid cuts on refugees’ welfare and livelihood adaptation strategies. As budgetary cuts are anticipated in multiple refugee-hosting contexts, this research will inform policymakers on the effects of funding withdrawal and contribute to the extensive literature on cash transfers.[4] Return Migration: Reducing Barriers and Risks for Social Cohesion in South Sudan With Erik Wibbels (UPenn), Kyilah Terry (UPenn)
Description
Funded by Evidence in Governance and Politics (EGAP) and Penn's Making a Difference in Global Communities grant, and in collaboration with the Sudd Institute and UNHCR, this exploratory study examines the social cohesion implications of South Sudanese refugees returning from Uganda and Sudan. It also addresses the additional challenges of hosting refugees from Sudan and proposes potential interventions to reduce tensions within and between communities. The study aims to provide actionable insights tailored to the local context for policymakers, humanitarian organizations, and community leaders, along with a menu of possible interventions to promote peaceful coexistence amidst displacement challenges.[5] Credit Access for Responsible Extraction: Providing Incentives to Address Exploitation and Externalities in Sierra Leone’s Artisanal Mining Sector With Darin Christensen (UCLA) and Cecilia Mo (UC Berkeley)
Description
This pilot study, funded by IPA's HTRI, addresses the need for formal finance for artisanal and small-scale gold miners in Sierra Leone. In partnership with the local microfinance institution Munafa, we are developing an intervention using conditional credit to tackle livelihood vulnerabilities in this sector. The pilot assesses whether providing artisan miners with low-interest loans can reduce exploitation (including debt bondage) and promote ethical labor practices. Insights gained will inform a more extensive study involving rolling out the credit product and rigorously evaluating its impact on trafficking, miners' and mine workers' socio-economic conditions, and environmental hazards.[6] The Discipline of Political Science: Structural Changes, Informal Networks, and Methodological Revolution With Sandra González-Bailón (UPenn), William Dinneen (UPenn), Yiqing Xu (Stanford), Lluís Danús (UPenn), and Carolina Torreblanca (UPenn)
Description
Leveraging a corpus of 140,000+ articles from 174 political science journals published between 2003 and 2023, this project charts the discipline’s evolution, examining how informal collaboration, methodological credibility, and structural changes shape scholarly impact. Using text-as-data analysis, network science, and bibliometric approaches, the project measures publication growth and shifting productivity norms, maps the "hidden college" of informal collaboration to gauge its influence on scholarly reach, tracks the rise of credibility-oriented research designs and evolving causal rhetoric, and examines how structural pressures—tight job markets and metric-driven evaluation—shape collaboration patterns, topic selection, and career trajectories.[7] Program to End Modern Slavery (PEMS) Bangladesh
Funding by DoS has been terminated midway through the project’s lifecycle.
With Dev Patel (Harvard), Carlos Schmidt-Padilla (UC Berkeley), Harsha Thirumurthy (UPenn), Catalina Udani (UPenn), and Nudrat Faria