Gaia's research: making an impact in developing countries
"When I graduated from Bocconi it was 2000, and I wasn't really sure about what I would do with my life. So I stayed at Bocconi and started collaborating as a teaching assistant for the macroeconomics program", explains Gaia Narciso, Associate Professor at the Department of Economics, Trinity College, Dublin. From Milan she went to the London School of Economics for her Master, and then went back to Bocconi for her PhD. "At that point I did the job market and I ended up at Trinity, in 2007. In Dublin I discovered an academic environment which is open to new initiatives: they give you the chance to put your ideas into practice. For example, I wanted to create a development course, and so the department created the right conditions for me to do it. In addition, Trinity College is considered to be Ireland's top university, and that enables access to European funds for research; sometimes we are contacted by foreign universities to join them for funding requests".
With a specialization in development economics, Gaia Narciso works in countries like Vietnam and Uganda. In Uganda, for example, she handled a project which related the dietary balance of people infected with HIV to their productivity, with the consequent impact on the local economy. "Even though our department is small, it's growing; two years ago we created the Trinity Impact Evaluation Unit (TIME) with the objective of collaborating with non-governmental organizations that operate in emerging and developing countries. It wasn't easy at the beginning. The NGOs didn't seem to be interested in our contributions. We didn't allow ourselves to get discouraged, though, and we continued to conduct research and promote the importance of high-impact scientific evaluations of the programs. Eventually, we managed to gain the attention we were seeking. Then we decided to give ourselves a name, and TIME was born". To present itself and attract new partners, TIME – which now has seven members, with Gaia Narciso as Director – has organized a series of events with a program of international workshops.
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