Dr. Dorothee Weiffen is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Welfare Research Program at ISDC. Her research focuses on food and nutrition security, livelihoods, and well-being in low- and middle-income countries, with a particular interest in conflict-affected and fragile settings. Her methodological expertise includes experimental and quasi-experimental impact evaluations, and micro-level data collection, quantitative statistical analysis, geospatial methods, and machine learning approaches. She also has regional expertise in South Sudan, Syria, and Latin America.
Dorothee completed her PhD at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. In her dissertation, Aid in Adversity: Impacts and Mechanisms of Assistance to Rural Communities in Crises, she examined how, for whom, and under what conditions crisis assistance is effective, as well as which unintended effects may arise, thereby contributing to the literature on assistance in fragile contexts. During her doctoral studies, she was also a visiting researcher at PRIO in Oslo.
In addition to her work at ISDC, Dorothee is affiliated with the Zero Hunger Lab at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Before joining ISDC, she worked at the Institute for Vegetables and Ornamental Crops in the research group on Food Security and Economic Development. Dorothee holds an M.Sc. in Public Economics from Freie Universität Berlin and a B.A. in Economics from Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. She also completed exchange semesters at the Pontifical Javeriana University in Bogotá, Colombia, and at the University of Belgrade, Serbia.
