Jakob Dirksen

Research topic:

The measurement of welfare, poverty, and inequality.

Jakob is an Analysing and Challenging Inequalities scholar funded by the at LSE. He is also Research and Policy Officer at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative within the Department of International Development at the University of Oxford and Lecturer at Leuphana University of Lüneburg. He studied Liberal Arts & Sciences (BA), Political Philosophy (MA), and Public Policy and Human Development (MSc & MPP) with Social Protection specialisation in Germany, Spain, and at the United Nations University. Previously, Jakob held research and teaching positions with the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford and worked for the German Federal Foreign Office. Some of his most recent publications include reports for and with the World Health Organization and the United Nations Development Programme, policy briefs for the G7, as well as academic articles and book chapters on multidimensional poverty, health equity, child poverty, and metrics of welfare and development.

Research interests: the development and use of conceptually and normatively sound metrics for evidence-based policy-making. He seeks to better align well-being measurement with what people value and conducts research on the theoretical formulation, empirical estimation, and policy-application of welfare, inequality, and poverty measures.

Latest publications

• Nogales, R., Dirksen,J., Alkire, S. (2025) Advancing Inclusive Sustainable Development by Measuring Poverty and Wellbeing Better, G20 Policy Brief. [ Link ]
• Chelsie Cintron, Madolyn Rose Dauphinais, Xinyi Du, Alexa Tabackman, Andrew Lenart, Ashley Laliberte, Jakob Dirksen & Pranay Sinha (2025). Enriching tuberculosis research by measuring poverty better: a perspective. BMC Global Public Health 3, 17. [Link]

Supervisors: Dr Tania Burchardt, Professor Frank Cowell