Meghna Sharma

BA, MA, MSc

Research Fellow

meghna.sharma@employment-studies.co.uk

Meghna joined IES as a Research Economist in February 2023 and was promoted to Research Fellow in September 2024. Before joining IES, she briefly worked as a Research Officer with Independent Schools Inspectorate (ISI) on a national consultation project to analyse survey responses. She has a diverse experience of working in social and development space in India for roughly 6 years. Her experience spans from teaching children from low-income communities, assisting government on a city-wide school evaluation, to working on various social research projects.

Meghna has studied Bachelors and Masters in Economics from India from 2010-2015. She pursued her second Masters in Social Policy and Research from University College London in 2021-22. At UCL she gained expertise in advanced quantitative methods, evaluation methods, as well as conducting literature reviews. While pursuing her MSc, she worked as a Research Assistant on a study that aimed to understand adolescent risky behaviours in the UK. Furthermore, she has worked on Millennium Cohort Study data for her RA role as well as her dissertation, both in understanding the risky behaviours and their potential impacts on adolescents. She holds experience of conducting focus group discussions, semi-structured interviews, and behavioural experiments in India. Given her work trajectory and qualifications in India as well as the UK, she is skilled at coding, analysing data, and generating outputs for decision making purposes. Meghna has mostly worked in the education space firstly as a teacher and then researcher and has used mixed-methods for research spanning from education, health, financial inclusion and mental health areas.

Education

2010-13	Delhi University	BA Economics
2013-15	Jawaharlal Nehru University	MA Economics
2021-22	University College London	MSc. Social Policy and Research

Career

2016-18	Fellow	Teach for India
2018-19	Consultant	Child Rights Commission
2019-20	Research Associate	IFMR
2022	Research Assistant	UCL
2022	Research and Evaluation Officer	Independent Schools Inspectorate