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About
Thelma is an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Cambridge and a Visiting Fellow in the Department of School Policy at the London School of Economics, where she also earned her doctorate degree.
Her research lies at the intersection of the economics of education and development, with a particular focus on Sub-Saharan African education systems. She investigates school choice, private school heterogeneity, and the distributional consequences of education policy, using rigorous methods.
Her current research examines language-of-instruction policy and implementation in multilingual education systems, focusing on how mismatches between policy design and learners’ linguistic realities affect literacy and numeracy outcomes and contribute to educational inequality. Her work integrates school-level data, large-scale surveys, and institutional analysis to generate insights into the mechanisms shaping learning in diverse contexts.
Thelma is the 2025 recipient of the George Bereday Award for Best Article in Comparative Education Review.
Publications
Journal Articles
Obiakor, T. E. (2025). Are Low-Cost Private Schools Accessible and Equitable? Examining the Drivers of Public Versus Private Primary School Attendance in Rural and Urban Nigeria. Comparative Education Review, 69(2), 234-268. Awarded the 2025 CIES George Bereday Award.
Obiakor, T. E. (2024). Language of instruction policy in Nigeria: Assessing implementation and literacy achievement in a multilingual environment. International Journal of Educational Development, 109, 103-108.
Book Chapters
Obiakor, T., Iheonu, C., & Ihezie, E. (2024). COVID-19 in Nigeria: The equity implication of COVID-19 responses. In A. Altaf, D. Tsikata, G. D. Torvikey, & M. Dekker (Eds.), Equity in COVID-19: Mitigation and policy responses in Africa (pp. 147–172). Springer.