My research focuses on key elements relevant for health systems, such as health insurance and payment to health care providers. I am an expert on evaluation of public policies, ranging from the design of evaluations to estimation of the policy impacts.

Mr. Murali Padmanabhan is a development professional with 24 years of experience and exposure in the field of gender, children, disability and inclusive development. He has a Master’s degree in Social Work. He is trained in gender and disability and inclusive development, human rights law, social justice and development law, inclusive project cycle management, ToT in UNCRPD (ToTAL-IDA) and Disability Inclusive Disaster Risk Reduction (DIDRR). His experience in working with disabled people and other marginalized stakeholders ranges from grassroots to the international level. He promotes empowerment, equality and mainstreaming through inclusive and participatory program development, policy influence and advocacy. He is currently the Gender & Disability Inclusion Advisor for the South and Central Asian Region at the Disability Inclusion Lab of Light for the World. The Disability Inclusion Lab is a space for NGOs, disabled people organizations, governments and businesses to come together to make disability inclusion work. The initiative’s main focus is on influencing key stakeholders including GOs, INGOs, bilateral and multilateral agencies about the human rights of persons with disabilities through advocacy, sensitization and capacity building.

Silvia works at the Department of Economics, at UCL in London. She has been teaching in Higher Education for the past 20 years. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and she is pursuing pedagogical research in the fields of inclusive assessment and e-learning. Silvia's scholar research interests are in the areas of development and international economics as well as fintech. Silvia has published in internationally recognised journals, such as Empirical Economics and the Journal of Business Research. In the last year, she has lead two-sponsored research projects on cryptocurrencies. The first one being about the economics stance of bitcoin and the other one on bitcoin and financial inclusion in China. Silvia is also committed to widening participation in Economics. In particular, she is developing a project with school pupils and teachers from disadvantaged areas in London for encouraging them to find out more about what economists do. Silvia also serves as a referee for economic journals, such as Oxford Economic Papers and the B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics. She is one of the economics judges for the Global Undergraduate Awards. She provides consultancy for the FCO-UCL project and she is an assessor at the Arena Centre for Research-Based Education. Before joining academia, Silvia has consulted a number of national and international institutions, such as UNESCO, DFID and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Trade.

PhD Student Research Interests: Gender inequality, Older women's living standard, Pension, Quantitative methods