From New Delhi to Hong Kong via Singapore: The academic journey of our Post-doctoral Fellow
In this new semester, we are happy to have Dr Stuti Rawat, joining the Department of Asian and Policy Studies, The Education University of Hong Kong, as a Post-doctoral Fellow. Stuti will be working on her own research projects and collaborating with colleagues on exciting studies related to public trust, online teaching and social capital. She will be expanding her teaching portfolio by teaching undergraduate courses on the Strategic Management of Non-Profit Organizations and the Foundations of Policy Science and Public Management, as well as hosting workshops for Masters’ students related to academic writing and research. 
Stuti earned her PhD degree from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at The National University of Singapore (NUS), earlier this year. Her doctoral research lies at the intersection of public policy and development. Her dissertation adopts a quantitative approach to address the twin questions of what motivates governments to spend on the agriculture sector and what the impact is (on food security and agricultural productivity), when they actually do. For her doctoral research, she received the Musim Mas Sustainability Dissertation Award, a prestigious award conferred to candidates who show exceptional accomplishment in conducting dissertation research in the area of sustainability.
Stuti’s interest in the agriculture sector was spurred through her experiences working at the International Water Management Institute and The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) as a Consultant and Research Associate. Witnessing the centrality of agriculture in rural lives in a lower-middle-income country like India, impressed upon her the role that well-designed public policies can play in effecting change on multiple fronts. Her research goal is to generate evidence on the impact of policies, while developing an understanding of the policy-making process and the behavior of policy targets. Adopting this lens, in addition to agriculture, Stuti has worked on topics related to water, climate change, behavioural change, natural disasters and public administration.
In the past, Stuti has worked as a Consultant for the World Bank in Singapore, International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in Nepal, The Vittorio Dan Segre Foundation (remotely) and most recently for the University of Cambridge – serving as an Expert for the ASEAN Development Outlook Report of the ASEAN Secretariat.
Although, Stuti grew up in Delhi and completed all her education prior to the PhD here, she has a close connect to the mountains. She was born in Sikkim and traces her roots to the state of Uttarakhand in India, both of which are mountainous states in the Himalayas. This makes EduHK extra special for her; she loves the serenity of the campus and the rollicking green hills that surround it. Stuti is looking forward to a post-pandemic world when she can meet students in person and enjoy time together discussing matters of common interest such as teaching, research, tennis and music.