Wendy Janssens is Professor in Development Economics. She is Academic Board member of the Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development (AIGHD), in the HERA management team (Health Economics Research Amsterdam), and research fellow at the Tinbergen Institute. She is also research advisor for PharmAccess Foundation. Previously, she held visiting positions at the Institute of Fiscal Studies in London, and the World Bank Development Economics Research group in Washington, DC.
Currently, she is coordinating the Global Mental Health theme group at AIGHD, and leading an interdisciplinary research programme on mobile technology and universal health coverage for mothers and children in Kenya, including the evaluation of maternal mental health interventions.
She has received numerous research grants, including a BRAC grant to examine digital finance, women's empowerment and mental well-being in Kenya; a DFID-ESRC grant to study social norms and child marriage in Pakistan; an NWO-Wotro grant to study family planning, HIV/AIDS and empowerment in Mozambique; and an NWO-VENI grant to study the interaction between health insurance and microfinance in Sub-Saharan Africa.
She has extensive experience in designing and coordinating multi-disciplinary research programmes to provide rigorous and locally grounded policy advice to national and international organisations as well as governments (such as Oxfam Novib, Pathfinder International, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the World Bank).
