Katrina Kosec is a Senior Research Fellow in the Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion Unit and Theme Leader for Public Investment and leads research programs on gender, agriculture, and rural transformation and on fragility, conflict, and migration. She is also an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University.

Her research focuses on the linkages between governance, gender, and poverty. One strand of work investigates the impacts of government policies and public sector incentives on poverty, women’s empowerment, and individuals’ attitudes and aspirations. A second considers the drivers of women’s empowerment and influence beyond the household, considering the roles of public sector policies, private sector practices, climate change, and economic shocks.

Katrina has designed and carried out surveys and field experiments in Pakistan, India, Nepal, Tanzania, Mali, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Papua New Guinea in collaboration with international agencies including the World Bank, the IGC, GIZ, 3ie, WVI, and USAID, as well as with government and local NGO partners.

At IFPRI, she serves as editor of the EnGendering Data Blog and co-organizes the Applied Microeconomics and Development (AMD) seminar. She is also a member of the Evidence in Governance and Politics (EGAP) network and serves on the Executive Committee of the Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations Section of the American Political Science Association (APSA).

Her work has been published in journals including the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Public Economics, the Journal of Development Economics, Nature Climate Change, the Journal of Health Economics, World Politics, Economic Development and Cultural Change, and World Development. It has also been featured in the Economist, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, and NPR, and cited by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

She received her PhD in Political Economics and MA in Economics from Stanford University, where she was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow in Economics. She also holds a BSc in International Political Economy from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

See here for her personal website.