Alejandro Ganimian
Alejandro J. Ganimian is a Visiting Associate Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and an Associate Professor of Applied Psychology and Economics (with tenure) at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.
His work seeks to address one of the most pressing challenges for low- and middle-income countries: how to transition from providing schooling to learning for all. Specifically, he is interested in how to help school systems in these contexts ensure that these “first-generation learners” develop the requisite academic and social-emotional skills to participate in the economy and society. He pursues this goal by partnering with governments, non-profits, and businesses seeking to launch, expand, or modify education policies and programs to conduct field experiments to evaluate their impacts at scale using innovative measures of key outcomes and mechanisms. He works primarily in Latin America (where he is from) and South Asia (where he completed his doctoral work).
He holds a doctorate in Quantitative Policy Analysis in Education (with a concentration in economics) from Harvard University, where he was a fellow in the Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality and Social Policy; a master’s in Educational Research from the University of Cambridge, where he was a Gates Scholar; and a bachelor’s in International Politics from Georgetown University. He was also a postdoctoral fellow at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab’s (J-PAL) regional office for South Asia in Delhi, India.
His research has been published in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, the World Bank Economic Review, the Review of Educational Research, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, and the Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, among others. He is a Jacobs Foundation Research Fellow, a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellow; an Advisory-Board member at the Organization of Ibero-American States for Education, Science, and Culture (OEI); a Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution; an Invited Researcher at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL); a Member of the CESifo Network on Economics of Education; and a Faculty Affiliate at the Center for International Development at Harvard and Global Action for Policy at Northeastern. He has consulted for bilateral and multilateral aid organizations, including the United States Agency for International Development, the Gates Foundation, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and Innovations for Poverty Action.