Dr Soomin Oh

Image of Soomin Oh

International Development Department
Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Contact details

Address
International Development Department
School of Government
Muirhead Tower
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston, Birmingham,
B15 2TT, United Kingdom

Soomin Oh is a postdoctoral research fellow at IDD working for Development Engagement lab (DEL). For DEL, she helps design and analyse surveys to understand public attitudes towards international aid and communicates the findings with the partners in the development industry. Her research is focused on understanding the logic of public goods provision in the developing world, with a particular focus on spatial inequality in the provision. Her current projects look at how political incentives interact with service characteristics to determine what, where and how public goods are allocated in Indonesia and how ethnic politics has a conditioning effect on the relationship. 

Soomin received her PhD in Political Science from Duke University and BA in Political Science from Columbia University.

Qualifications

  • PhD in Political Science, Duke University, 2021
  • MA in Political Science, Duke University, 2017
  • BA in Political Science, Columbia University, 2013

Biography

Soomin Oh joined IDD in 2021 as a postdoctoral research fellow for the Development Engagement Lab. Prior to joining IDD, she completed her PhD at Duke University in 2021, where she wrote a dissertation on the logic of subnational allocation of public goods in the developing world.

For DEL, Soomin designs and analyses surveys to understand public attitudes towards international aid in the UK, US, Germany and France, and communicates the findings with the development sector. 

More broadly, Soomin’s research is focused on understanding the logic of public goods allocation, both domestic and international. Her current research projects look at (1) the interaction between electoral incentives and service characteristics to determine what, where and how public goods are provided, and (2) how colonial legacies impact the patterns of public goods allocation in the postcolonial countries.

Soomin has been a part of impact evaluations for the USAID governance project in the West Bank (2018), Duke Energy Initiative project in Nepal (2019), and the World Bank project in Central Asia (2020), where she designed the surveys for impact evaluation, trained and monitored the survey implementation, and analysed the data for reports on the impact evaluations.

Research

Research Interests

  • Political economy of development
  • Politics of public goods allocation, in particular WASH
  • Public attitudes towards international cooperation 

Current Projects

Development Engagement Lab

Publications

Policy Papers

Pablo Beramendi, Soomin Oh, and Erik Wibbels. 2018. Evaluation of the Local Governance and Infrastructure Program. Williamsburg, VA: AidData at William & Mary.

“Local Governance, Electricity Provision and Decentralization in Nepal” with Dipendra Bhattarai, Robyn Meeks, Dalia Patino-Echeverri, Subhrendu Pattanayak, and Erik Wibbels

View all publications in research portal