Leyla Karimli

Leyla Karimli, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Social Welfare at UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. Her research focuses on a multidimensional and multidisciplinary analysis of poverty and social exclusion in a global context. Situated within Amartya Sen’s capability approach, Professor Karimli’s research is based on the proposition that poverty needs to be treated as a complex phenomenon experienced not only in terms of material deprivation but also as powerlessness, limited human agency, exposure to vulnerability and risk, and social exclusion.

Professor Karimli has 13 years of international research and practice experience focusing on poverty and social exclusion, including working with international development agencies in the former Soviet Union and Sub-Saharan Africa. Most recently, she was involved in research in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Kenya, Colombia, Philippines, and Tajikistan.

Professor Karimli received her PhD from Columbia University’s School of Social Work with a concentration in social policy and social welfare. She completed her postdoctoral trainings at the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration and New York University’s Silver School of Social Work’s McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research.

Professor Karimli is a faculty affiliate at Luskin’s Global Public Affairs, the International Center on Child Health and Asset Development (ICHAD), and UCLA’s California Center for Population Research (CCPR).