Dr Christian Darko

• PhD, University of Birmingham
• MSc. Business Economics and Finance, University of Surrey
• B.A. Economics, KNUST, Ghana
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Christian holds a PhD from the University of Birmingham joined Birmingham. He joined the Birmingham Business School in 2017 from King’s College London.

His research examines the process of human capital development, the role of family background, and intergenerational transmission of inequality, and how these impact individual outcomes, including labour market, education, wellbeing, and health. He has expertise in the analysis of individual and workforce data.

Christian leads the ‘Work, well-being and labour market Inequalities’ workstream within the Workplace Inclusivity Research Centre in Birmingham Business School.

Christian teaches a range of undergraduate and postgraduate modules in areas relating to business economics, labour and development economics, and research methods.

Christian supervises PhD students and is interested in supervising PhD students across a range of topics in economics of education, labour economics, development economics, inequality, and topics that align closely with his current research areas.  

Christian’s research takes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the process of human capital development and labour market outcomes. His primary research focuses on the education and employment of marginalised people with emphasis on inequalities including those relating to gender and poverty. Parts of his current research includes investigating and understanding; challenges to education among young children including the role of family background; health and wellbeing of young people; transition from school to work. Christian is also interested in firm level analysis and has pursued this interest in relation to the factors associated with firm performance and labour productivity.

Christian has been involved in several large research projects including an ongoing ESRC-funded project that aims to enhance understanding of how minority ethnic doctors and aspirants progress through the stages of a medical career, and how ethnicity and gender are significant to that journey. He is a co-investigator on a funded project by The Edward Gostling Foundation that is assessing the impacts of AI on the employment opportunities and work experiences of disabled people in the UK. Christian has also conducted a large study on university graduates in Ghana as part of a British Academy/Leverhulme project. His past research also included leading a team of researchers on a project on commuting and labour market implications in Ghana.

His work has been published in reputable journals in education and development economics, including the British Educational Research Journal, Economic Letters, Education Economics, Journal of Development Studies, Journal of International Development, Journal of International Business Studies, and Small Business Economics.