About
Sabina Alkire

Sabina Alkire is Director of the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) — a research centre within the Department of International Development, University of Oxford — where she works on a new approach to measuring poverty and wellbeing that goes beyond the traditional focus on income and growth. 

Photo by IISD/ENB | Kiara Worth

With her colleague James Foster (OPHI Research Associate and Professor of Economics at George Washington University), she devised this new method for measuring multidimensional poverty, which has distinct advantages over existing poverty measures. The approach has been adopted by the Mexican government, the Bhutanese government in their Gross National Happiness Index, and the United Nations Development Programme. 

Professor Alkire’s broad research interests include multidimensional poverty measurement and analysis, welfare economics, Amartya Sen’s capability approach, the measurement of freedoms, and human development.