I’m a Research Assistant Professor within the Division of Public Policy, a Jockey Club Institute for Advanced Study Junior Fellow, and a Faculty Affiliate with the Institute for Emerging Market Studies at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). I am also a Scholar at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown Law and a DAAD Research Ambassador for the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst/German Academic Exchange Service. My research interests include the relationship between political institutions, public opinion, and policy change in the context of public health and health policy. My research is also motivated by broader interests in the politics of science policy, comparative social policy, and global health security and governance. Previously, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the O’Neill Institute and a 2017-18 Fulbright Fellow at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. Before beginning my doctoral program, I spent several years in London working as a researcher and consultant on social and economic trends in the United Kingdom and the United States, counter-terrorism stakeholders in the European Union, and carbon emissions of private corporations. In addition, I was a Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD) Scholar at the Helmholtz Zentrum München and the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy in Munich, Germany. I have a BA in Political Science and a BS in Microbiology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, an MS in Public Policy and Administration from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and an MA and PhD in Government from Georgetown.

As Professor of Public Policy and Leadership and Director of Global Humanitarian Policy at the University of Virginia, Kirsten brings almost 20 years of experience working in the humanitarian sector. Previously she served as the Chief of the Policy Analysis and Innovation section at the United Nations Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Her career includes long-term field postings and operational deployments to numerous emergencies including the international responses to Hurricane Mitch in Honduras, the Ethiopian Famine, the South African Regional Food Crisis, the Liberian War, the Tsunami in Indonesia, Hurricane Katrina, the Pakistan Earthquake, the Timor-Leste Security Crisis, the Global Food Crisis and the Haiti Earthquake. She also served as a humanitarian advisor to President Clinton in his role as the UN Special Envoy for Haiti and as a policy advisor to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the global food crisis in 2008. She has led major policy processes and authored numerous high-profile policy reports documents that have been implemented by Member States and adopted in key UN resolutions. She has written peer-reviewed articles been the guest editor of Journal special editions focused on humanitarian crises, and in 2019 co-authored the book Understanding the Humanitarian World. She currently co-leads a large research initiative bringing together scholars, global practitioners, and students to develop research and engagement that contributes to supporting the needs of vulnerable populations caught in humanitarian crisis.

I am a Postdoc at the Department of Economics of the University of Copenhagen. I am affiliated to the Center for Economic Behavior and Inequality (CEBI) and to the Center for Healthy Aging (CEHA) of the University of Copenhagen. I completed a Ph.D. at Collegio Carlo Alberto and University of Turin and a M.Sc. at Bocconi University. My research interests lie in Behavioral Economics, Health Economics and Economics of Education. I work on applied questions using observational and experimental data.

Ph.D. Researcher in Economics at the European University Institute. My policy work is in the field of health economics, in particular focusing on RCTs to increase vaccination uptake in targeted groups (non-EU immigrants and parents with different levels and fields of education). I also research in gender economics, studying the cultural determinants of (i) gender-oriented policies such as abortion and divorce, and (ii) household asset accumulation