Dorien is an Assistant Professor at the Chinese Studies Group and the Department of Economics of KU Leuven. She is also an affiliated research scholar of the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions (SCCEI). She previously worked as a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at Stanford SCCEI and as a lecturer on Chinese politics at the KU Leuven Chinese Studies Group. 

Dorien completed her Ph. D. in Economics at KU Leuven LICOS — Centre for Institutions and Economic Performance. She previously graduated magna cum laude from the Master of Arts in Sinology and the Master of Science in Research in Economics at KU Leuven. She considers her background in the non-disciplinary-specific study of the Chinese language and area as a perfect complement of the non-area-specific discipline of economics.

Her research interests center around the economics and measurement of human capital formation and social mobility in China. She is involved in the design and evaluation of multiple field experiments testing the effectiveness of early childhood interventions in rural China. She’s currently working on the development of a scalable observation-based assessment for early skill formation in rural China.