A little about me
I am a PhD researcher based at the Institute of Education (IOE), University College London’s Faculty of Education and Society. I conduct interdisciplinary research around the topics of gender, education, capabilities and youth. Currently, I serve as Project Manager on the Bridging AGEE (Accountability for Gender Equality in Education) project. This project develops, adapts and expands the AGEE Framework— an indicator framework for participatory work on documenting and evaluating gender equality in and through education— for improved gender and education data across scales (local, national, regional and global). I am also co-coordinator of the HDCA (Human Development & Capability Association) Early Career Researchers and Practitioners Network. I served as a Cumberland Lodge Fellow in 2022-24.
I am particularly interested in the role of youth in global development— how youth agency, voice and action contribute to social change, and how foreign aid and global development policy influences education and youth in crisis-affected contexts. My dissertation is investigating how meanings and measures of youth agency used by global organizations are understood, interpreted or contested by local gender and education stakeholders in crisis-affected contexts in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. This research also seeks to work directly with youth using art and participatory methods.
I come to the PhD with more than decade of professional experience as an education and international development practitioner working in Latin America, the Middle East and Eastern Africa. I have completed consultancies for a number of international organizations including Education Development Trust, UNDP, UNESCO and UNICEF. I hold an Advanced Diploma in Monitoring & Evaluation: Project Management for the UN, Government and NGOs (NYU, 2017), a M.Phil. in Public Policy (Cambridge, 2016), and a B.A. in International Studies (Johns Hopkins, 2010).
Cumberland Lodge, 2022