Our PhD in Public Policy (PPOL) doctoral students are registered at the (Harvard Griffin GSAS) and delve into a range of research areas during their time at Harvard.
Our current PPOL students and their areas of interest are listed below.
Development economics and political economy.
Francesca Arruda de Amaral
Criminal organizations, spatial analysis of crime, computational social science, comparative criminology.
Public economics, child welfare, and education policy.
Sachet Bangia
Development economics, industrial organization, and labor economics.
Science, Technology and Society (STS).
Anwesha Bhattacharya
Development economics and political economy with a focus on gender and governance.
Labor economics (gender), development economics (social norms, inequality).
David Bodovski
Labor economics, educational and social policy, economics history.
Science, Technology and Society (STS); critical legal studies; law and political economy; digital technology.
Sarah Chen
Judgment and decision making and social psychology with a particular interest in emotions, health/medical decision making, and behavioral policies.
Computational approaches to policy and decision making, criminal justice reform, technology, and national security.
Alice Danon
Labor economics, economics of education, and behavioral economics.
Pedro de Souza Ferreira
Development economics, labor economics, political economy.
The empirics of law and judicial politics.
Applied microeconomics with a focus on development, health, and environmental economics.
Audrey Feldman
Early childhood education and development, implementation research, and delivery of government and nonprofit services.
Grace Finley
Development economics and industrial organization with a focus on the role of firms in developing economies.
Development and health economics with a focus on nutrition and WASH in developing countries, and the relationship between discrimination/identity and health behaviors and outcomes.
Jun Gao
Environmental economics and urban and spatial economics with a focus on the distributional and efficiency consequences of environmental policy.
Labor economics, behavioral science, and machine learning.
Sara Gong
Applied microeconomics, particularly topics related to inequality, American politics, and the media.
Joshua Henderson
U.S.-China relations; international relations; foreign policy; security studies; bureaucratic politics.
Urban economics, economic history, and mixed methods research.
Calvin Isley
Economic and social impacts of artificial intelligence; algorithmic fairness, bias, and trust; social media; political polarization.
Public and labor economics with a focus on intergenerational mobility, social capital, and low-income housing.
Applied microeconomics with a focus on labor, health, and wellbeing.
Health economics, prescription drugs, industrial organization, public economics, opioid crisis, applied microeconomics, consumer/household finance, social insurance, data science.
Climate adaptation, indirect effects of climate policy.
Laura-Thorne Kincaide
Applied microeconomics, political economy, and labor economics.
Labor and development economics with a focus on Social Security, in particular the design and evaluation of unemployment insurance systems. Roman’s current research focuses on Germany, but in future work he would like to study labor market institutions in regions with weaker governance, especially the Middle East.
Education, migration and economic development; political economy and state capacity in developing countries; urban and regional economics.
Political economy of social movements and collective action. Representation of women and minorities in the economy and the public sphere.
Lou Lennad
Science and technology studies, bioethics governance, and policy analysis with a current focus on human genetics and neuroscience.
Workforce dynamics (social capital, occupational change, technology), antitrust and monopsony power, regional/spatial economics.
Michelle Li
Environmental economics, climate policy, and labor economics.
Paichen Li
Energy/resource/environmental economics, public economics, and industrial organization, particularly how government programs can help to build efficiency and resilience in the electricity market (production, transmission, distribution, and consumption) and enhance reliability, affordability, and sustainability of power supply.
Sylvia Lin
Health care operations research, stochastic decision making, and operations management.
Trade, labor economics, and development.
Analyzing and addressing the drivers of inequality and discrimination faced by BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities using tools from labor economics, public economics, and industrial organization.
Conor McGlynn
Science and Technology Studies (STS), standard setting, and AI governance.
Joseph Melkonian
Development economics and immigration.
Labor, public, and behavioral economics, specifically, the impact of information barriers and social capital on inequality, the role of formative experiences in career choice, and mental health in schools.
Sivan Myers
Behavioral economics, judgement and decision-making, technology policy, social media and misinformation.
Political violence, civil wars, political methodologies.
Yousra Neberai
Development, health, and environmental economics.
Khadidja Ngom
Environmental and energy economics, development economics.
Karen Ni
Labor and education economics with particular interest in policy interventions to reduce gender and racial inequalities in higher education.
Savannah Noray
Labor markets, especially as they relate to immigration and female labor supply.
Seokmin Oh
Labor and public economics.
Germán David Orbegozo-RodrÃguez
Political economy, environmental, development economics.
Yuan Pei
Development economics, political economy, and behavioral economics.
Labor economics, public economics, and applied econometrics. Specific interests in how governments can intervene optimally to support work in a changing economy, the design of social welfare and insurance programs, and social determinants of health.
Pariroo Rattan
Political economy of development and Science and Technology Studies (STS).
Hilton Simmet
Science, Technology, and Society (STS) and development economics.
Behavioral economics, political behavior, and behavioral public policy. Interested in political and economic beliefs.
Erica Sprott
Environmental regulation, climate change, renewable energy, auction design, housing, transportation, urban planning, public choice.
Development economics, labor economics, and political economy.
Joshua Stinson
Complex social systems, systems dynamics, organizational behavior, organizational change, decision science, data science, international relations, warfare, decision making, risk assessment, strategic empathy, collective decision making, emotion and decision making, strategic judgement, forecasting, investing, and approaches to radical uncertainty.
Chloe Tanaka
Environmental/natural resource economics, labor economics, applied microeconomics, and sustainable development.
Katie Tucker
Homeland security and international conflict, specifically as it relates to terrorism and nuclear weapons.
Dilan Tulan
Judgment and decision making, conflict and collaboration, interpersonal relations, psychology of technology.
Jessica Van Meir
Comparative politics and sociology with a regional focus on Latin America. Interested in informal labor, urban politics, social movements, and gender and sexuality.
Development, behavioral, and labor economics, particularly in the context of education and the psychology of poverty.
Eric Wert
Public and labor economics.
Joe Winkelmann
Economics of inequality, education, and labor markets.
Justin Wong
Science, Technology and Policy Studies (STS), critical legal studies, global ordering and politics.
Roni Yadlin
Political violence, radicalization and extremism, civil-military relations, international relations.
Katie Zhang
Environmental, urban, and development economics.