Title: Measuring the Elusive "Local": 3 essays on the Political Economy of Aid Allocation
PhD Supervisor and Co-Supervisor: David Sylvan (IR/PS) and Jean-Louis Arcand (Economics)
Expected completion date: June 2024
Swetha's dissertation comprises of 3 essays which connect contemporary debates on foreign aid allocation with themes of aid localization, power, local ownership, and colonial origins of aid. She uses mixed methods approaches and primary data to empirically understand how donor preferences and incentives influence the targetting of aid funding, and its downstream effects on local actors.
Swetha is a doctoral researcher at The Geneva Graduate Institute (IHEID). Her PhD research on the policy economy of foreign aid allocation is multi-disciplinary and draws on concepts/methods from Political Science, International Development and Economics. The research is heavily rooted in and informed by ground-level development practice. She has also served as a Consultant for international organizations including the ILO and UNU-WIDER. Before the PhD, she worked as a Monitoring and Evaluation professional in Sierra Leone, Lesotho, South Sudan and DRC. She holds a Masters in International Economics and Conflict Management from Johns Hopkins University, SAIS and a Bachelors in Social Sciences from Tata Institute of Social Sciences.
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