Introducing the 2026 HCI PhD Summer Fieldwork Fellows
The Human Capital Initiative (HCI) is pleased to announce the fellows for the 2026 PhD Summer Fieldwork award to advance innovative, policy-oriented research and support PhD student-led projects that bridge evidence and policy to improve human capital outcomes globally.
This fellowship engages PhD candidates currently advised by HCI Faculty Affiliates and provides summer funding to catalyze field research that advances the goals of the Global Development Policy Center to foster evidence-based insights on the impact of human capital on development to inform policy and provide actionable solutions to address global challenges including poverty, women’s well-being, and sustainable economic growth.
For the competitive 2026 cycle, four extraordinary fellows have been selected and will receive funding to conduct field research during the summer 2026.
Meet the 2026 Fellows
Shengqi Ni is a PhD candidate in Economics at Boston University. He holds an MA in Economics from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and a BA from the Southwestern University of Finance and Economics. His research focuses on development economics and organizational economics.
For his Summer Fieldwork Fellowship, Shengqi will evaluate whether a one-week educational travel program can raise migration intentions and human capital investment among disadvantaged students in rural China. His fieldwork involves conducting in-depth interviews and surveys with program participants to assess how exposure to urban environments and higher education institutions shapes students’ aspirations, beliefs about returns to education, and long-term migration decisions. By combining qualitative interviews with quantitative survey data, Shengqi aims to identify the mechanisms through which short-term experiential programs can influence the life trajectories of students from underserved communities.
Srishti Sharma is a third-year PhD Candidate in Economics at Boston University. Her research intersects development economics, health economics, and behavioral and experimental economics, with a focus on the behavioral and psychological mechanisms behind poor health outcomes.
For her Summer Fieldwork Fellowship, Srishti will conduct research through a household health survey with 800 participants in New Delhi. The study examines how individuals, both undiagnosed and diagnosed with diabetes, update their beliefs in response to blood glucose test results, and whether motivated reasoning leads them to discount worrying diagnostic signals while embracing reassuring ones. Participants are also randomly assigned to predict their health status alone or in the presence of a family member, isolating whether social pressure compounds self-deception. Those with abnormal readings will be followed up to measure treatment acceptance and disease management outcomes. The project aims to generate evidence for policies that go beyond access to address the behavioral roots of non-adherence.
Daniel Han is a second-year Ph.D. student in Economics at Boston University. His research interests are in Development Economics, Behavioral Economics, and Labor Economics. He is particularly interested in how misinformation affects the take-up of social programs in developing countries. In other ongoing work, he examines the causes and consequences of educational migration.
Daniel will implement a novel study in rural Western Kenya, a prominent context to analyze development economics and the site of many NGO-run programs. His experiment tests two strategies for debunking misinformation about social programs: (1) correcting individuals’ beliefs about the program, and (2) correcting individuals’ perceptions of what others in their community believe about the program. Daniels research will therefore shed light on whether interventions targeting each belief channel can effectively address misinformation and improve program take-up.
Vasudha Ramakrishna is a Ph.D. Candidate in Economics at Boston University. Her research lies in economic history, development economics and political economy.
For her Summer Fieldwork Fellowship, Vasudha will continue her research on barriers to civil registration and state capacity in Ghana. Working in partnership with the Births and Deaths Registry, she intends to collect survey data at hospitals and registration centers to identify and map the obstacles individuals face in registering deaths events. She also plans to launch a pilot experiment for the study’s next phase, testing whether targeted interventions that reduce these barriers can increase death registration rates.
The Human Capital Initiative (HCI) advances interdisciplinary research on the role of human capital in human development to inform policy solutions to global challenges including poverty, women’s empowerment and sustainable economic growth through investments in education and health.