Theresa Ng'andu

Theresa is a fourth-year PhD student in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, under the supervision of Dr Jeremy Foltz. She is interested in development economics, with a special focus on environmental and resource economics, and the economics of education. Her current research examines the impact of development, as measured by impervious surfaces, on flooding, and how this flooding affects the prevalence of diseases such as malaria and waterborne diseases like cholera, typhoid, and dysentery.

During the summer of 2025, Theresa worked as a PhD fellow with the Zambia Evidence Lab at the International Growth Centre office in Lusaka. As part of this fellowship, she has been engaging with local authorities to obtain local flood data and gain a better understanding of how floods are managed across Zambia. Theresa holds a Master of Science in Agricultural and Applied Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a B.A. with honours in Economics and French from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania.