AIDDATA - Key Persons
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- Assistant Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan
Dr. Adhvaryu is Assistant Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. He pursues three interrelated agendas in his research: 1) firm decision-making and the resulting productivity dynamics in emerging markets; 2) healthcare delivery in low-income contexts; and 3) the long-run economic impacts of early life events. He received his PhD, MPhil, and MA from Yale University and his BA from University of Pennsylvania.
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- Bernhardt Denmark Chair of International Relations at New York University
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- Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Arizona
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- Associate Professor of Public Policy, Economics and Environment at Duke University
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- Director of Partnerships and Communications
- Partnerships & Communications
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- Senior Fellow
- Senior Fellow at Resources for the Future
Allen Blackman is a Senior Fellow in the Land, Water and Nature Program at Resources for the Future (RFF), an independent, nonprofit research institution in Washington, DC. An expert on environmental and natural resource policy in developing countries, Allen Blackman focuses principally on industrial pollution control and tropical deforestation in Latin America and Asia. Much of his research evaluates environmental management strategies that aim to overcome barriers to conventional regulation in developing countries, including weak institutions and missing infrastructure. He coordinates RFF's participation in the Environment for Development (EfD) initiative and is a research fellow at the EfD Center for Central America.
Blackman's work on industrial pollution control analyzes public disclosure programs, economic incentive instruments, and voluntary regulation. He has also studied the adoption and diffusion of clean and climate-friendly technologies. His research on tropical deforestation assesses agroforestry systems and conservation policies such as protected areas and payments for environmental services initiatives. He also has worked extensively on U.S. environmental regulatory reform, including voluntary programs and mortgage innovations designed to affect land use.
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- Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology at the College of William & Mary
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- Senior Research Analyst
- Senior Research Analyst in AidData 's Policy Analysis Unit
Ana Horigoshi is a Senior Research Analyst in AidData's Policy Analysis Unit (PAU), where she conducts policy-oriented quantitative analysis of a number of development topics. Her primary research interests are governance, political economy, and development financing.
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- Professor of Development Economics at the University of Goettingen
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- Professor of Economics at the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas
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- Assistant Professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University
Andrew Zeitlin is Assistant Professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. He is also a Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Global Development, Research Associate at the Centre for the Study of African Economies at Oxford University and the Lead Academic for the International Growth Centre's Rwanda Program.
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- Director
- Director of FUCAPE Business School
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- Program Manager
- China Development Finance
Asad Sami is a Program Manager at AidData, a research lab housed at William and Mary's Global Research Institute. He conducts data collection and analysis on foreign aid, debt, and other investment flows from emerging country donors, such as GCC countries and China, to the world. He also drives AidData's engagements with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Education
M.A., Economics, New York University
B.Sc. (Hons), Economics, Lahore University of Management Sciences
Background
Asad Sami is an economist in the international economic and social development field. Previously, he worked as a Research Associate in the Sustainable Development Finance program at the Center for Global Development in Washington, DC. He conducted research, collaborated with a diverse set of stakeholders, and produced ideas and knowledge products on macroeconomics, development finance, debt sustainability, IMF programs and SDRs, and the role of MDBs and DFIs in mobilizing private sector finance for development in disadvantaged countries. He also worked with the Asian Development Bank as a Research Associate Consultant, collaborating with the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation program to produce a report analyzing the potential of international trade in Central and South Asia. In addition, Asad has experience in appraising and managing client engagements for MDB-funded urban infrastructure and service delivery projects in developing countries. He has previously interned at the World Bank, the International Growth Centre, and the Development Academy of the Philippines.
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- Assistant Professor, University of Hong Kong
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- Professor of Economics and Chair of International and Development Politics at Heidelberg University
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- Head of Research on International Climate Policy at the University of Zurich
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- Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University
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- Visiting Assistant Professor of Government at the College of William & Mary
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- Bernhardt Denmark Chair of International Relations at New York University
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- Executive Director
- Executive Director of AidData at William & Mary
Brad leads a team of over 30 program evaluators, policy analysts, and researchers who work with governments and international organizations to improve the ways in which overseas investments are targeted, monitored, and evaluated.
Dr. Bradley Parks is the Executive Director of AidData at William & Mary. He leads a team of over 30 program evaluators, policy analysts, and media and communication professionals who work with governments and international organizations to improve the ways in which overseas investments are targeted, monitored, and evaluated. He is also a Research Professor at William & Mary's Global Research Institute.
Education
Ph.D., International Relations, London School of Economics and Political Science
M.Sc. (Distinction), Development Management, Development Studies Institute, London School of Economics and Political Science
B.A. (Highest Honors), International Relations, College of William & Mary
Background
Prior to joining AidData, Dr. Parks was part of the initial team that set up the U.S. Government's Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC). He oversaw the MCC's annual country selection process from 2005-2010, and as Acting Director of MCC Threshold Programs he managed the implementation of a $35 million anti-corruption and judicial reform project in Indonesia and a $21 million customs and tax reform project in the Philippines. He holds a Ph.D. in International Relations and M.Sc. in Development Management from the London School of Economics and Political Science. His research has been published in dozens of academic and policy journals, including Science, Governance, World Development, AEA Papers & Proceedings, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, the Journal of Development Economics, the American Journal of Political Science, andChina Economic Quarterly. He is the author of three books, including Banking on Beijing: The Aims and Impacts of China's Overseas Development Program (Cambridge University Press). Dr. Parks is also a Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Global Development (CGD), where he works on issues related to Chinese lending practices and the future of the Belt and Road Initiative. He has served as a Principal Investigator on more than 50 policy research projects-funded by USAID, the World Bank, the African Development Bank, PEPFAR, DANIDA, Agence Française de Développement (AFD), the Green Climate Fund, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Gates Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, and others-worth more than $60 million. Dr. Parks' policy publications with AidData, CGD, the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and the Kiel Institute for the World Economy include How China Lends, Bargaining with Beijing, Hidden Debt Exposure to China, Belt and Road Reboot, Banking on the Belt and Road, and Is Beijing a Predatory Lender? His work is regularly featured in print and broadcast media, including the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Bloomberg, Le Monde, CNN, NPR, and the BBC.
Expertise
International Debt
Aid Effectiveness
Impact Evaluation
Evidence-Based Policymaking
Chinese Development Finance
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- Associate Chair of the Geography Department at West Virginia University
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- Assistant Professor
- Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Brigitte Seim is Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Policy at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She is a scholar of comparative politics, focusing on the political economy of development. Her research examines the relationship between citizens and political officials, with a particular emphasis on accountability in developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa. She holds her PhD in Political Science from the University of California, San Diego.
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- Deputy Director for Data Analytics and Technology Solutions of the Policy Analysis Unit
Brook Lautenslager is the Deputy Director for Data Analytics and Technology Solutions of the Policy Analysis Unit at AidData. She plays an essential role in working with internal team members and external funders to design and deliver customized technical solutions that solve problems, surface insights, improve efficiency, and add value to AidData's research and data products.
Brook works with the Chinese Development Finance, Listening to Leaders, Sustainable Development Intelligence, and Transparent Development Footprints programs to develop dashboards, internal websites, and decision support tools, as well as implementing solutions to efficiently collect data from various sources. She has automated coding of financial flows for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); led the design and development of high-quality, interactive dashboards for AidData's China's Public Diplomacy data; and piloted a process to web scrape vast amounts of social media data and articles from countless domestic media outlets across the Europe & Eurasia region. She has also ensured the smooth functioning of TUFF (Tracking Underreported Financial Flows) internal, an in-house data collection website for the Chinese Development Finance Program team, and helped transfer our Listening to Leader sampling frames containing tens of thousands of contacts from Google sheets to an SQL database.
Expertise
Full stack development, SQL and NoSQL databases, Test-driven development, Agile methodologies
Education
B.S., Computer Science, Christopher Newport University, 1999
Background
Brook brings 20 years of experience as a software engineer building software solutions for many different types of customers. At AidData, she developed an in-house software development process, which uses a combination of Scrum and Kanban agile methodologies.
Prior to AidData, she worked for 3M Cogent developing ID enrollment applications and for Northrop Grumman developing command and control systems and inventory tracking applications.
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- Associate Director of the Chinese Development Finance
- Associate Director, Chinese Development Finance Program
- China Development Finance
Brooke Escobar is the Associate Director of the Chinese Development Finance Program team, where she oversees AidData's efforts to apply the Tracking Underreported Financial Flows (TUFF) methodology to opaque development finance flows. She previously served as AidData's Senior Program and Technology Manager, focused on Chinese and Middle Eastern aid analysis, from 2012-2021 and as a project manager for AidData from 2009-2011. She holds an MA in Public Affairs from the University of Texas at Austin and a BA in Political Science from Brigham Young University.
Education
M.A., Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin
B.A., Political Science, Brigham Young University
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- Julius Silver Professor of Politics at the Alexander Hamilton Center for Political Economy at New York University
Bryan Burgess is a Senior Policy Specialist in the Policy Analysis Unit. His recent research has involved quantifying whole-of-US contributions across public and private sector actors in Tanzania and the Indo-Pacific; developing a machine learning-enabled process to understand donor funding alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals; and tracking Russian financing of civic space actors, cultural centers, and broadcasting efforts. Bryan develops, pilots, refines, and scales methods to quantify new and novel data on U.S. foreign policy tools and the foreign policy influence of great powers across Europe, Asia, and Latin America. He has contributed data analysis, desk research, and writing support to more than 20 AidData policy publications.
Education
B.A., Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, College of William & Mary
M.A. in the Governance of Migration and Diversity from University of Leiden, Netherlands
Background
Bryan previously served as a Junior Program Manager and then Program Manager at AidData. Prior to joining AidData, he worked in USAID's Global Development Lab and as a student researcher for AidData's Listening to Leaders program. He holds an M.A. in the Governance of Migration and Diversity from University of Leiden, Netherlands and a B.A. in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies from the College of William & Mary.
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- Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Pittsburgh
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- Assistant Professor of Kinesiology and Health Sciences at the College of William & Mary
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- Graduate Director at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin
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- Assistant Professor of International Affairs at the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia
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- Research Professor of Economics at Duke University
Charles Becker is Research Professor of Economics at Duke University. He is interested in exploring the economies of such countries as Kazakhstan, India, sub-Saharan Africa, Russia, and Kyrgyzstan. His research has focused on economic demography, social security system forecasting, CGE modeling, mortality and disability risk, determinants of health care utilization, computable general equilibrium simulation modeling, and urban economics. His on-going projects involve assessing infant mortality rates, poverty in developing countries, accidental deaths in middle-income countries, and the performance of minority students in Economics doctoral programs.
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- Assistant Professor of Political Science at DePauw University
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- Associate Professor of Economics at the Villanova School of Business at Villanova University
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- Professor of Human Geography at the University of Sussex
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- Assistant Professor at the Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver
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- Professor and Associate Chair of Political Science at Brigham Young University
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- Professor at the College of William & Mary
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- Assistant Professor of Natural Resources and Environmental Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign
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- Candidate at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University
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- Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the College of William & Mary
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- Professor of Political Science at Brigham Young University
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- Director of the Center for International Development and Conflict Management
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- Professor and Chair of the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia
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- Professor in Earth Systems Science at Stanford University
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- Assistant Professor of Economic Statistics at the University of Trento, Italy
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- China Development Finance
- Senior Research Scientist at Aid
- Senior Research Scientist, Director of Tracking Underreported Financial Flows
Dr. Ammar A. Malik is Senior Research Scientist at AidData, where he leads the Chinese Development Finance Program. His team develops pioneering methods, such as the Tracking Underreported Financial Flows (TUFF) methodology, to track and analyze underreported financial flows from non-traditional donors to developing countries.
Education
Ph.D., Public Policy, George Mason University
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- Geospatial Analyst
- Research & Evaluation
Dr. Carly Muir is a Geospatial Analyst in the Research and Evaluation Unit of AidData. She utilizes spatial analyses to examine human-environment interactions, primarily related to agricultural production, sustainability, and climate change. Within AidData, her role is to conduct interdisciplinary research by integrating geospatial techniques into various projects covering a range of topics and geographies. This includes employment of time series satellite imagery and remote sensing-based models to help understand socio-ecological and environmental issues.
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- Assistant Professor in Political Science and the Program on African Studies at Pennsylvania State University
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- Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Richmond
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- Assistant Professor at NYU Tandon School of Engineering
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- Assistant Professor of Economics at Villanova University
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- Professor of Political Science at Duke University
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- Public Affairs at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin
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- China Development Finance
- Junior Program Manager
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- Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Davis
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- Assistant Professor of Public Service and Administration at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas a & M University
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- Professor of Statistics at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Rome, Italy
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- Assistant Professor of Economics at the School of Global Policy & Strategy at the University of California, San Diego
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- Director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo ( PRIO )
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- Senior Fellow and Deputy Director for the Global Economy and Development Program at Brookings
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- Gruber Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley
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- Assistant Professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University
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- Associate Professor of Development Economics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University
Jessica Hellmann
Director of the Institute on the Environment and the Russell M. and Elizabeth M. Barrett Chair of Ecology at the University of Minnesota
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- Director
- Chairman of Ecology
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- Associate Professor of Geographical Information Systems ( GIS ) at Southampton University
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- Associate Professor of Political Science at Brigham Young University
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- Deputy Director, Communications and Data Analytics
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- Senior GIS Specialist at MEASURE Evaluation
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- Professor of Biology at the College of William & Mary
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- Visiting Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute ( IFPRI )
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- Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Pennsylvania State University
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- Associate Professor at the School of Public Affairs and School of International Service at American University
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- Public Affairs at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin
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- Director of the Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict and Complexity at the Earth Institute at Columbia University
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- Associate Professor of Health Sciences at Wilfrid Laurier University
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- Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University
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- Professor of Political Economy and Development at the University of Zurich
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- Chief Analytics Officer at the Global Innovation Fund
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- Executive Director of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago in India ( EPIC - India )
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- Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Political Science at the University of Pittsburgh
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- Five College Assistant Professor of Government at Smith College
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- Professor in the Department of Politics and the Center for Statistics and Machine Learning at Princeton University
Kosuke Imai
Professor in the Department of Politics and the Center for Statistics and Machine Learning at Princeton University
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- Senior Geospatial Scientist
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- Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley
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- Assistant Professor of Political Science at Macalester College
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- China Development Finance
- Junior Program Manager
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- Associate Professor of Geography & Environmental Systems at the University of Maryland
Marc Levy
Deputy Director of the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) at The Earth Institute at Columbia University.
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- Deputy Director of the Center for International Earth Science Information Network ( CIESIN ) at the Earth Institute at Columbia University
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- Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Mary Washington
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- Assistant Professor at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management and the Department of Political Science at the University of California at Santa Barbara
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- Assistant Professor of Earth System Science at Stanford University
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- Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stony Brook University
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- Candidate in Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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- Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign
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- Assistant Professor of Government at the College of William & Mary
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- Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development
Michael Cain
Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for the Study of Democracy at St. Mary's College of Maryland
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- Director of the Center
- Professor
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- Assistant Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin
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- Co - Director of the Global Research Institute and Hylton Professor of Government and International Relations at the College of William & Mary
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- Senior Partnerships Associate
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- Research Associate at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law
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- Executive Director and Co - Founder of WeRobotics
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- Full Professor of International Development Studies in the School of Politics and International Relations at University College Dublin
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- Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame
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- Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, College Park
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- Associate Professor of Government at the College of William & Mary
Philip Roessler
Assistant Professor and Director of the Center for African Development (CAD) at the College of William & Mary
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- Director of the Center for African Development ( CAD ) at the College of William & Mary
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- Associate Professor of International Development at the Edmund a. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University
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- Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School
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- Assistant Professor at the Hannover Institute of Macroeconomics at Leibniz University
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- Joukowsky Family Assistant Professor of Political Science and International and Public Affairs at Brown University
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- Professor of Economics at the College of William & Mary
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- Professor of Economics at Clemson University
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- Senior Research Scientist
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- Professor of Economics at the University of Lucerne
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- China Development Finance
- Junior Program Manager
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- Senior Lecturer at the School of Economics at the University of Sydney
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- Assistant Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science
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- Assistant Professor of Public Health at Touro University California
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- Director of Policy Analysis
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- Assistant Professor of Economics at Boston University
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- Associate Professor at the School of Politics and International Relations at University College Dublin
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- Assistant Professor of Political Science at Temple University
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- Research Scientist at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver
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- Research Professor at the Peace Research Insitute Oslo ( PRIO ) and Editor of International Area Studies Review
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- Assistant Professor of Health Services at the University of Washington School of Public Health
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- Associate Professor at the University of Pittsburgh
AidData's team of economists, political scientists, geographers, developers, program evaluators, policy analysts, and media and communications professionals has a track record of successfully managing more than 90 grants and contracts worth more than $50 million over the last 16 years.
See all our People, or visit our Join the Team page for career and student opportunities with us!
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- Training and Instructional Design Manager
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- Simulations Analytics at Scensei
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- Associate Director of the Center on Conflict and Development at Texas a & M University
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- Research Professor at the Global Research Institute at the College of William & Mary
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- Associate Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Geneva in Switzerland
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- Senior Researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo ( PRIO )
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- Assistant Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Maryland, College Park
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- Director of the Violent Intranational Political Conflict and Terrorism ( VIPCAT ) Lab at William & Mary
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- Professor of Political Science at Brigham Young University
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- Ittleson Professor of Environmental Studies and Sociology at Brown University
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- Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Nevada, Reno
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- Visiting Assistant Professor in Interdisciplinary Studies at the College of William & Mary
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- Visiting Fellow at the Center for Global Development
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- Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Houston