Rahma Ahmed is a Ph.D. student at the LSE and an Analysing and Challenging Inequalities Scholar at the International Inequalities Institute, with a research interest in development economics. Her current research focuses on forced displacement and inequality in developing countries. She has over five years’ experience working at the intersection of politics, particularly migration and social upheaval, and development economics.

Prior to this, her research work included projects with the World Bank’s Africa Research Group on Niger’s extractives sector and its potential effects on institutional development, as well as with the Gender Innovation Lab on the impact of gender inequality in West Africa. She was also a research assistant at the Thought Leadership Unit at the International Finance Corporation, where she assisted with research on developing private enterprise in fragile and conflict-affected countries. Rahma has done research on the impact of migration on labour markets in the Arab region (on behalf of the UNESCWA), on youth socio-economic engagement (for the UNICEF Middle East Regional Office), and on refugees’ access to higher education (at Kiron Open Higher Education).

Rahma began her career in the private sector as a Complex Securities Analyst at Ernst & Young. She holds a double bachelors degree in Economics and Political Science from Yale University and a Master of Public Administration from Columbia University.