Saumitra Jha is an associate professor of political economy at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, and, by courtesy, of economics and of political science, and convenes the Stanford Conflict and Polarization Lab. He is also a senior fellow at the Center for Democracy, Development and Rule of Law within the Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Affairs and at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. In 2020–21, he is a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Jha’s research has been published in leading journals in economics and political science, including Econometrica, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the American Political Science Review and the Journal of Development Economics, and he serves on a number of editorial boards. His research on ethnic tolerance has been recognized with the Michael Wallerstein Award for best published article in Political Economy from the American Political Science Association in 2014 and his coauthored research on heroes with the Oliver Williamson Award for best paper by the Society for Institutional and Organizational Economics in 2020. Jha was honored to receive the Teacher of the Year Award, voted by the students of the Stanford MSx Program in 2020. Jha holds a BA from Williams College, master’s degrees in economics and mathematics from the University of Cambridge, and a PhD in economics from Stanford University. Prior to joining Stanford GSB, he was an Academy Scholar at Harvard University. He has been a fellow of the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance and the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University. Jha has consulted on economic and political risk issues for the United Nations/WTO, the World Bank, government agencies, and for private firms.

My research explores the interaction between global and domestic dynamics that affects the provision of quality education for all. Recently, I focus on understanding how social, political, economic, health, and environmental crises shape education policy initiatives, coordination, and negotiations among education policy actors, including international, national, subnational, and school actors. I use an interdisciplinary approach based on political science and sociology along with mixed methods.

I am in the Educational Technology and Learning Design PhD program at SFU and an Assistant Teaching Professor at the University of Victoria (School of Public Health and Social Policy). I have been teaching in post-secondary institutions for 10 years. My area of research focuses on accessible and inclusive education for students with mental-health-related disabilities who are studying online; I hope to contribute to making Canadian post-secondary institutions more inclusive, so that all students can achieve their academic goals.

Director of the Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) of the Global Environment Facility (GEF). I've worked full-time on evaluation since 1999 with GEF and UNDP (where aI served as Evaluation Advisor and Deputy Director of IEO). In these functions I've managed and conducted numerous evaluations, focusing especially on environment-poverty interlinkages, which is my major interest. I spent the 1990s at UNU as Academic / Sr. Academic Programme Officer for environment and sustainable development. I've written extensively on issues related to environment, sustainable development, environmental hazards and evaluation. I've had visiting positions at Kyoto University, Rutgers University and the University of Montana. A native of Finland, I was educated at the University of Helsinki and Lund University, and I hold a PhD in Social and Economic Geography.