Professor Paola Salardi is an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, and the Director of the Trudeau Centre for Peace, Conflict and Justice at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto. Her background is as an applied economist with a focus on economics of conflict, economic development, inequality and political economy. Before joining the University of Toronto in 2014, Professor Salardi received a PhD in Economics from the University of Sussex and worked at the Inter-American Development Bank and as a consultant with the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) in the UK and with UN WOMEN. Professor Salardi is a Faculty Mentor for the Reach Alliance program and a Senior Fellow at Massey College. 

Professor Salardi has taught a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses in applied economics and statistics. Her core focus pedagogically in her work at the Munk School has been on developing innovative approaches to teaching economics and data analysis to non-economists.  Professor Salardi’s research background bridges the fields of the Economics of Conflict, and the Economics of Inequality and Discrimination.  Her research has focused on the legacy of conflict on welfare, the changing role of women in post-conflict countries, the role of institutions in shaping the presence of violence and on inequality and women’s empowerment.  This has included a broad geographic focus, including work on inequality and discrimination in Brazil, violence and school performance in Mexico, violence, education and women’s empowerment in Timor Leste, and humanitarian responses to crises in Kenya, Nepal and the Philippines. Her research has been published in the Journal of Development Economics, World Bank Economic Review, World Development, among others.