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About
Reza Omidi’s research focuses on social inequalities, welfare regime, political economy, and social policy developments. His master’s thesis examined how global development discourses and the international political environment influenced Iran’s development plans from the 1940s to the 2000s. His doctoral research focused on the institutional context and political–economic dynamics that shaped the emergence of the welfare system in Iran.
He has worked with several public institutions and civil society organizations as an expert and consultant, and has managed multiple multi-stakeholder research projects on education policy, inequality and poverty, and social protection system. Reza has also served as an Assistant Professor at the University of Tehran, teaching courses in social policy. Prior to joining LSE, he collaborated with the Department of Development and Postcolonial Studies at the University of Kassel in Germany as an Associated Fellow and Adjunct Lecturer, where he worked on political economy of development and welfare system in the West Asia and North Africa. He is currently focused on the politics of social policy reforms, their institutional dynamics of advance and retrenchment, and their interrelationship with broader social and political transformations.
His academic work spans the political economy of social policy, welfare systems, and education policy. In recent years, Reza has several publications, including two co-authored book chapters in Social Policy in Iran: Main Components and Institutions (Routledge, 2022), and he has also contributed a book chapter to Labour History and the Economy in Iran (I.B. Tauris, 2025).
Expertise
Social policy, political economy of development, welfare regimes