M Niaz Asadullah

I am a Visiting Professor of Economics at Reading University, UK. Previously I held visiting/academic positions at Oxford, Harvard, Kent, Manchester, Reading, Malaya, Monash, and Mindanao State Universities (UK). Other affiliations include Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), South-East Asia Lead of the Global Labor Organization (GLO), Fellow of the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Peer Review College and Life Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA). Outside academia, In addition to holding the above positions, I have worked at BRAC (Bangladesh) as a Distinguished Fellow, held several policy appointments e.g. serving as advisor to the minister for agriculture and food industries and as a member of the National Agricultural Advisory Council (MPPN), Government of Malaysia (2020–2022), head of the ICT white paper taskforce and a member of the telecom sector white paper and manpower sector reform taskforces -- all under the interim government of Bangladesh (2025).

Current research draws upon data from South and South-East Asia and focuses on issues such as poverty, labor market, education, child marriage, gender and the rise of non-state (low-cost for-profit, NGO-run as well as Islamic) schools. Past work has been supported by national (e.g. HIR scheme of University of Malaya) as well as international grants (e.g. the Australian Development Research Award scheme, Leverhulme Trust, International Growth Centre (IGC), DFID, South Asian Network of Economic Research Institutes (SANEI) and the World Bank).

I am an Associate Editor of Singapore Economic Review, the Journal of Human Development and Capabilities and on the editorial advisory board of COMPARE: A Journal of Comparative and International Education and International Journal of Educational Development.