Emma Smith
Emma Smith is a development economist working at the intersection of behavioral and development economics with a focus on refugees and forcibly displaced people. She is a postdoctoral fellow at CID and a Provost's Distinguished Faculty Fellow at Georgetown University, where she will join the School of Foreign Service as an assistant professor. In one main strand of her research, Emma aims to help identify interventions that can meet the pressing needs of forcibly displaced people, often in collaboration with international humanitarian and development organizations. Her work includes looking at barriers to mental health services, effectiveness of shelter interventions, and how refugees can overcome informational and behavioral constraints to accessing remote work. In a second strand of research, Emma focuses on the effects of social norms broadly, with work on the effects of mental health stigma, gender norms' interaction with climate-induced resource scarcity, and the social costs of supporting progressive leaders in conservative settings.