Irène Tombo

Irène Tombo is a first year Ph.D. student in Comparative Politics. She was born and raised in Goma, DRC. She recently graduated from Johns Hopkins University-SAIS with an MA (2017) in International Economics with concentrations in African Studies and International Political Economy. Prior to attending SAIS, she attended the University of the Incarnate Word where she received a BA (2015) in International Relations with a minor in Political Economy. As a PhD student, she is interested in understanding how public goods and services, especially education, are provided in weak states given the nature of a country’s political settlement, institutions, and the political economy framework at play. This summer Irène will use her SKJ fellowship for exploratory research in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). She will investigate citizen-state relations to better understand the role of state and non-state actors in the provision of public goods and services.

Read Irène Tombo’s fellowship report here.