Solomon Zena Walelign

Solomon Zena Walelign is the Executive Director of the Policy Innovation Research Center (PIRC), a Research Fellow at the Ethiopian Policy Studies Institute, and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Gondar. His research primarily lies at the intersection of development and environmental economics, with an emphasis on agriculture, livelihoods, employment, poverty, natural resource management, migration, conflict, and forced displacement. Solomon holds a double Ph.D. in Environmental and Development Economics from the University of Copenhagen and in Forest Sciences from the Georg-August University of Göttingen. Previously, he held academic and research appointments as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Copenhagen and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and as a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of South Carolina. He has also served as a short-term consultant at the World Bank. His current research agenda examines the causal impacts of insured annual loans on agricultural productivity, the effectiveness of career support programs on employment outcomes, and the role of intergroup contact interventions in reducing prejudice. He has conducted extensive fieldwork in Nepal, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania.