Vidya Diwakar is a mixed-methods researcher with a focus on poverty dynamics, violent conflict and intersecting crises, gender and education. She is the Deputy Director of the Chronic Poverty Advisory Network (CPAN) and a Research Fellow at IDS.

Vidya’s research is focused on understanding gender-disaggregated drivers of poverty escapes, and the role of violent conflict and intersecting crises in creating poverty traps, especially in low- and middle-income countries. Within this, she adopts an intersectional lens to understand people’s pathways into and out of poverty and develop contextually relevant suggestions on reducing poverty and inequality. Vidya has authored and reviewed various reports, book chapters and journal articles on these topics, including as Guest Editor of a Special Issue on ‘sustaining poverty escapes’ in World Development.

Vidya has fundraised for and led a range of large multi-partner, multi-year policy-oriented research projects on poverty dynamics in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. In this process, she has worked with a range of international organisations (e.g. UNICEF, UN Women, World Vision) and bi-lateral aid agencies (e.g. USAID, FCDO, GIZ, SIDA) on longitudinal mixed methods research and evaluations related to poverty, inequality and vulnerability reduction.

Teaching

Vidya convenes the MA Poverty & Development, alongside the IDS Professional Short Course on Mixed Methods Research and Evaluation on Poverty and Inequality. She also lectures on poverty and on conflict in MA modules, and has experience teaching quantitative and mixed methods research to students and practitioners from diverse backgrounds.

For PhD Applicants

Vidya welcomes PhD applications on the following topics:

• Research on poverty drivers and policies to eradicate poverty in low- and middle-income countries.
• Poverty trajectories and its links to inequality and vulnerability, including a focus on understanding these dynamics in contexts of rapid change.
• Effects of violent conflict and intersecting crises on human development and poverty.