Leyla Karimli is an Assistant Professor at the Social Welfare Department at UCLA's Luskin School of Public Affairs. Leyla Karimli’s research interests focus on a multidimensional and systems-oriented analysis of poverty and social exclusion in a global context. Situated within Amartya Sen’s capability approach, Professor Karimli’s research is based on the proposition that poverty needs to be treated as a complex phenomenon experienced not only in terms of material deprivation but also as powerlessness, limited human agency, exposure to vulnerability and risk, and social exclusion.