Biography

Jakob is an Analysing and Challenging Inequalities Scholar at the LSE's Department of Social Policy, International Inequalities Institute, and CASE since 2022. He is also the Principal Researcher of the Perceptions of Inequality Research Programme at the LSE's International Inequalities Institute, and is Research and Policy Officer at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) within the Department of International Development at the University of Oxford. Trained as a multidisciplinary social scientist and philosopher, Jakob's doctoral research is in welfare economics. He studies empirical and methodological questions and problems concerning the measurement of well-being, inequality, and poverty across the many aspects of quality of life. He is particularly interested in questions around value pluralism about the importance of different aspects of life and the use of well-being/inequality/poverty statistics for better policy-making. He regularly supports and advises governments and UN organisations in technical and policy processes around establishing and using multidimensional poverty and well-being metrics as official statistics and evidence-based policy tools. In addition to his III ACS PhD scholarship, Jakob has also been awarded STICERD, Hayek Programme, and LSE Knowledge Exchange and Impact awards, as well a John Fell Fund award by Oxford University Press, and a Horowitz Foundation award for his research. Previously, he worked, among other places, at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford and the German Foreign Office.

Jakob Dirksen's current research interests are:

• Inequality
• Well-Being; Poverty
• Measurement
• Welfare Economics
• Public Policy
• Political Philosophy

Jakob's latest projects include:

• Dirksen, J. and Alkire, S. ‘Multidimensional Poverty: Measurement, Analysis, Applications’, in: Zimmermann, K. (ed.), Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics. Springer
• Dirksen, J. ‘Concepts and Measures of Development: Beyond GDP’, in: Dauncey, E., Desai, V., and Potter, R. (eds.), The Companion to Development Studies, 4th Edition. Routledge
• Dirksen, J., Lima de Miranda, K., and Wike, R. (2022). ‘Towards Economic and Social Prosperity Measurement Beyond GDP’, Think7 Policy Brief – G7 Germany 2022. (Also published as: 'Real Wealth', Think7 Policy Brief, The New Institute, Socio-Economic Transformation)
• UNDP and OPHI (2021). Global Multidimensional Poverty Index 2021. Unmasking Disparities by Ethnicity, Caste and Gender. New York: United Nations Development Programme