2026 Global Development Research Symposium
Event Details:
Location
This event is open to:
The annual Global Development Research Symposium showcases student creativity, achievement and research from diverse disciplines of study across Stanford University. The symposium features the work of scholars, including those who have received funding from the King Center over the last year.
The 2026 symposium highlighted posters by Stanford undergraduates, predoctoral fellows, graduate student researchers, as well as postdoctoral fellows. A keynote talk was delivered over lunch by Nava Ashraf, the 2026–27 Noosheen Hashemi Visiting Fellow at the King Center on Global Development, and Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Additional funding for this event was provided by the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education (VPUE) and the Vice Provost for Graduate Education (VPGE).
Schedule:
12:00 PM–12:45 PM: Keynote talk by Nava Ashraf
1:00 PM–2:00 PM: Poster presentations
About the Keynote Speaker
Nava Ashraf, Noosheen Hashemi Visiting Fellow at the King Center on Global Development
Nava Ashraf is Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics at the London School of Economics (LSE). She moved to LSE in 2016 after ten years on the faculty at Harvard Business School, and was also the Inaugural Research Director at the Marshall Institute. She is the Founder and Director of the Altruistic Capital Lab in London.
Professor Ashraf’s research combines psychology and economics, using both lab and field experiments to test insights from behavioral economics in the context of global development in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. She also conducts research on questions of intra-household decision making and gender norms in the areas of finance, fertility, and labor force participation. Her papers are published in leading journals including the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the Journal of Economic Perspectives. Her field experiments on health services delivery and educational investment have been carried out jointly with the Ministries of Health and Education in Zambia, using a model of co-generation of knowledge, reaching national and global scale.
Professor Ashraf received her PhD in Economics from Harvard University, and her BA from Stanford University in International Relations and Economics.
Posters
Scholar | Poster Title | Advisor/Mentor |
|---|---|---|
| Ahmet Gulek | Effects of Immigrants on Non-Host Regions: Evidence From the Syrian Refugees in Turkey | Ran Abramitzky |
| Amelia Hawkins | Harmonizing Agricultural Statistics Across Changing Administrative Boundaries: A Hybrid Boundary Approach in Bhutan | Jennifer Burney |
| Anirudh Mazumder and Ruikuan Zhu | Mosquito Vision: Leveraging Drone Imaging and Computer Vision to Improve Aedes aegypti Vector Control Programs | Joelle Rosser |
| Bhavya Pandey | Gender Identity and Representation in India: Does Legislators' Gender Affect Their Participation in Legislative Activity? | Christina Brown |
| Britney Bennett | Creating an Open-Source Remote Sensing Pipeline to Identify Target Areas for Malaria Prevention Interventions | Jade Benjamin-Chung |
| Daniel Hadi and Karetina Fekade-Tessema | The Tradeoff Between Social Proximity and Local Integration: Mentorship and Entrepreneurial Opportunity Recognition Among Refugees | Charles Eesley |
| Eliza Ennis | The Impact of Contraceptives on Health Outcomes in Colombia | Natalia Serna |
| Emma K. Southworth | Nonlinear Effects of Tropical Cyclones on Dengue Burden Across 26 Countries | Erin Mordecai and Marshall Burke |
| Jerry Wang | Mortality Risk Associated with Clinical Signs of Possible Serious Bacterial Infection (PSBI) in Young Infants in Asia | Ivana Maric |
| Krishna Sharma | Mama, I’m Coming Home: Brain Gain through Brain Circulation in India | Joshua D. Rauh |
| Kyler Shu | Human-Centered AI in the Fight Against Modern Slavery in Brazilʼs Arc of Deforestation | Mike Baiocchi and Kimberly Singer Babiarz |
| Leo Abramsky-Sze | Examining Food Security Within the Global Public Goods Framework | Jennifer Burney |
| Malvika Krishnamurthy | Blood-Based Stroke Biomarkers in African Populations: Advancing Equitable Diagnosis and Prognostication | Christine Ngaruiya |
| Martina Basgall Sequeira | Understanding Ranchersʼ Socio-Cultural Values and Perceptions of the “Good Life”: The Case of Eastern Bolivia | Lily Colburn |
| Miriam Awan | Does Climate Change Adaptation Reduce Migration? Household-Level Evidence from South Asia | Hélène Benveniste |
| Pablo Guzmán Lizardo | Unlocking Fiscal Capacity: Experimental Evidence from Sierra Leone | Katherine Casey |
| Rachael Gold | Exploring Extreme Heat in Informal Settlements: Building a Study Site to Evaluate the Health Effects of Extreme Heat and Heat-Specific Interventions | John Openshaw |
| Riya Bhatia | Analyzing Methods for Rapid Detection of Lead in Surma | Jenna Forsyth |
| Roshni Sahoo | What Would It Cost to End Extreme Poverty? | Stefan Wager |
| Samuel Minev-Benzecry | A Brief Geospatial History of Commodities and Transportation in Northeast Bolivia | Lily Colburn and Nicole Ardoin |
| Sanjay Palta-Hill | A Novel Method for Real-Time Exposure Measurement in an RCT in Bangladesh | Jade Benjamin-Chung |
| Sarah Mian | Why Are Coastal Communities Disproportionately Affected by Wildfires Implications for Water Quality in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) | Onja Davidson Raoelison |
| Sian McAllister | The Persistence of Extractive Economies: The Development Effects of Palm Oil Plantations in Sumatra | Allan Hsiao |
| Sophia Bonanno | Characterizing Dissolved Organic Matter in Tropical Peatlands Under Diverse Land Uses | Alison Hoyt |
| Suhani Luitel | Burden of Stillbirth in South Asia: An Analysis of the ANISA Dataset Using WHO’s OpenVA | Gary L. Darmstadt |