Rony Rodríguez

Rony is a third-year Ph.D. student in Education Policy and Program Evaluation (Economics of Education Field Course). His research is driven by a central question: How can education systems be adapted to protect and rebuild human capital when faced with large-scale shocks like conflict, displacement, and political crises? His academic and personal journey, which started in Nicaragua, has given him a strong motivation to address learning inequalities caused by political instability and forced migration.

He focuses on designing and evaluating scalable interventions that can reduce these inequalities. A core part of his approach is to integrate robust psychosocial support within educational settings to ensure all children can learn effectively. The centerpiece of his current work is a large-scale randomized controlled trial (RCT) in Armenia that he co-leads across 450 public schools. This project is designed to meet the educational and psychosocial needs of children displaced by the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. He also recently co-led another RCT in Ukraine with over 10,000 students, where he and his team embedded mental health components into an online tutoring program and saw positive impacts on learning outcomes and student well-being.

He is affiliated with the Center for International Development (CID), the Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS). His ultimate goal is to produce rigorous research that can inform social policies and create effective pathways toward more just societies.