Duja Michael

Palestine

Economics for Development (MSc), 2015
Harris Manchester College, Oxford

Funding: Hoffmann

Duja was the Weidenfeld Program’s first Palestinian Scholar and studied for an MSc in Economics for Development during the 2014-15 academic year.

Prior to Oxford, and after obtaining her Bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2012, Duja had worked for the World Bank, Birzeit University, and the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute (MAS) on multiple policy and research projects. The focus of her work was on the Palestinian economy and its development prospects despite the binding Israeli restrictions.

After graduation, Duja started a two-year professional Fellowship with the Overseas Development Institute where she worked with governments in East and West Africa. In South Sudan, she filled the position of Ministry of Health Economist where she led and managed multiple teams and projects aimed at improving budgeting processes and service delivery in government facilities while being a trusted policy adviser to the Ministry’s leadership. She also worked with the Office of the Special Advisers to the President in Sierra Leone on establishing and operationalizing the Sierra Leone International Benchmarks System – an M&E system that tracks the country’s progress on all national and regional benchmarks and identifies high-impact intervention areas.

Post her fellowship, Duja has held multiple short-term consultancies, both in West and East Africa and in Palestine where she currently resides.