I am a Professor of Economics at the University of Essex.  My ongoing and recent work contributes to research in the following domains:

Child development: early life risk factors, cognitive development, health, survival, maternal health, maternal depression, maternal behaviours.

Global health: infant mortality, maternal mortality, mental  health, access to antibiotics, clean water, clean air, the long run impacts of early life health intervention, intergenerational mobility.

Gender: women's property rights, sex selective abortion, domestic violence, political behaviour, fertility, women's employment, education and the gender wage gap.

Political economy of public service provision: political identity, substantive impacts of numerical representation of women and minorities.  

Poverty: program evaluation, land reform, civil conflict.

My research uses micro-data from across developing countries, and early twentieth century data from America and the Scandinavian countries.  I have served on steering of scientific committees in the health and education domains, including at the WHO and ILO, contributed to UNESCO's GMR, was recently a PI on a Grand Challenges Canada Consortium studying early life risk factors (visit this site), and am currently on the Senior Management Teams of the ESRC Centre for Micro-social Change and the Programme for Human Rights and Big Data at Essex.