Sarah Cook

Sarah Cook is Honorary Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney, Australia where she was inaugural Director at the Institute for Global Development (2018- 2020). A social economist and China specialist, her research has focused primarily on China's social and economic transformations, including on issues of labour and migration, poverty and inequality, social policy and gender, as well as on social protection in Asia.

She has held Director positions within the United Nations, at UNICEF’s Office of Research-Innocenti in Florence (2015-2018), and at the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) (2009-2015). Her work with the Ford Foundation’s Beijing Office included initiating research on the rise of informal employment and establishing a program to train gender economists.

From 1996-2009, she was a Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, where she directed both the MA in Gender and Development and the MPhil in Development Studies.

Sarah received her PhD from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, an M.Sc. from the London School of Economics and her BA from Oxford University.