Profile

I am an Assistant Professor (Lecturer) in Economics at Newcastle University Business School, which I joined in 2026. I am also an Honorary Fellow in the Department of Economics at the University of Melbourne, where I was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow from 2023 to 2026, a member of the Executive Committee of the Gender Lab, and an affiliate of the Life Course Centre and the Centre for Market Design. In 2026 I was a visiting fellow and guest lecturer at the CINCH Health Economics Research Center, co-hosted by the RWI Leibniz Institute for Economic Research and the University of Duisburg-Essen.

I am an applied microeconomist working at the intersection of development, health, and behavioural economics. My research studies how poor mental health and sleep shape cognition, productivity, and household dynamics, and the behavioural and psychological mechanisms through which environmental stressors undermine people's health and economic wellbeing. I use both randomised controlled trials and natural experiments, mainly in low- and middle-income countries, with fieldwork and ongoing projects in Kenya, Guatemala, El Salvador, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Fiji. My work has been published in journals including the Economic Journal, Health Economics, AEA Papers and Proceedings, SLEEP, Social Science & Medicine, among others, and covered by The Sunday Times (London), the Economic Observatory, and ABC Radio.

My ongoing projects include a randomised controlled trial in Nairobi, Kenya, evaluating whether cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) can improve sleep, productivity, and economic outcomes among the urban poor, funded by the Weiss Fund, the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA), and the University of Melbourne, and work on psychological resilience and intimate partner violence with collaborators in Pakistan.

Link to my CV

Link to my personal website

Educational qualifications

Ph.D. Economics, Monash University, 2023

M.A. Development Economics, University of Passau, 2019

Prospective PhD students

I am happy to supervise students in my areas of interest, including development, health, and behavioural economics, and field experiments in low- and middle-income countries. If you are interested in working with me, please email me your CV and a short research proposal.

My research lies at the intersection of development, health, and behavioural economics. I examine how poor mental health and insufficient sleep constrain the economic lives of people, and how psychological interventions and environmental conditions shape health, cognition, and productivity.

My work contributes to several core areas:

• Psychotherapy and economic outcomes: whether treating depression and insomnia with cognitive behavioural therapy improves productivity, decision-making, and economic wellbeing among the poor.
• Sleep, cognition, and decision-making: how sleep loss affects rationality, patience, and cognitive performance, and what this means for the economic behaviour of vulnerable populations.
• Climate and human health: how rising temperatures undermine sleep, cognition, and mental health, and the case for treating sleep as a first-order channel of climate damage.
• Mental health and household dynamics: whether treating depression can prevent or reduce intimate partner violence, and how maternal mental health responds to economic shocks and uncertainty.
• Psychological resilience: whether cognitive behavioural therapy protects people against the effects of future negative shocks.

Methodologically, I combine randomised controlled trials with natural experiments, drawing on wearable sleep-tracking devices, real-effort productivity tasks, lab-in-the-field cognitive measures, and large household surveys. I run fieldwork in Kenya, Guatemala, and El Salvador, with further projects in Pakistan, Indonesia, and Fiji. My work is empirical and policy-relevant, with a focus on credible causal identification in settings where mental health and sleep are most neglected.

Newcastle University Business School

2026: Development Economics (UG)

University of Melbourne

2025: Applied Microeconometric Modelling (UG & PG), Lecturer and Subject Coordinator

2024: Applied Microeconometric Modelling (UG & PG), Lecturer and Subject Coordinator

2023: Applied Microeconometric Modelling (UG & PG), Lecturer and Subject Coordinator

2023–26: Workshop Designer and Mentor, sheCommerce outreach programme

CINCH Health Economics Research Center, University of Duisburg-Essen

2026: Guest Lecturer for Health Economics (PG)

Monash University

2022: Business Statistics (UG), Health Economics (UG), Teaching Associate

2021: Health Economics (UG), Teaching Associate