College of Agriculture & Natural Resources Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics

Major Professor: Dr. Mason-Wardell

Area of Specialization: Development Economics

Publications on Google Scholar

Yeyoung Lee is a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics (AFRE) at Michigan State University. Her research interests focus on human capital development, water and food security, and the impacts of agricultural policies and programs on women’s time use and labor supply in African countries. Her research and outreach interests in development have taken her to fieldwork and interviews with farmers in Uganda and Tanzania during her master’s program.

Prior to joining AFRE, she worked as a research intern at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) based in Washington, DC, in 2019. While at IFPRI, she collaborated with researchers on the gender-specific response of agricultural labor to climatic shocks in Tanzania (as a lead author) as a part of the Gender, Climate Change, and Nutrition Integration Initiative (GCAN). Her field missions and research opportunities motivated her to pursue academic growth in the AFRE Ph.D. program.

In the academic year 2022-2023 at AFRE, she had an opportunity to work as a short-term consultant at IFPRI for the Feed the Future Innovation Laboratory for Small-Scale Irrigation (ILSSI), collaborating with Drs. Elizabeth Bryan and Claudia Ringler. (Please find the insights in the Agrilinks January 2024 blog post based on a working paper: Does Small-Scale Irrigation Affect Women’s Time Allocation? Insights from Ethiopia.)

Since Fall 2022, she has assisted her supervisors at AFRE (Drs. Nicole Mason-Wardell and Veronique Theriault) with the PRCI-Africa technical training activities under the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Security Policy Research, Capacity, and Influence (PRCI). She is also assisting Drs. Mywish K. Maredia and Duncan Boughton with research work under the Livelihoods and Food Security Fund (LIFT) project in Myanmar.