Kayanat Iltaf is a DPhil student in Social Intervention and Policy Evaluation, a Leverhulme Scholar (Primary), and an Oxford Pakistan Scholar. Supervised by Professor Jane Barlow, her research examines how early-life risk factors shape children’s developmental trajectories in low-resource settings, with a focus on Pakistan. Her doctoral work investigates how maternal risks during the perinatal period predict socioemotional and behavioural difficulties in preschool-aged children. She is particularly interested in the biopsychosocial pathways through which risk is transmitted from mothers to children, and how these mechanisms contribute to longer-term outcomes across the life course.
Before her doctorate, Kayanat worked as a predoctoral research fellow at the University of Göttingen’s Chair of Development Economics, contributing to collaborative research with international organisations, including the World Bank. She also brings hands-on field experience, having served as a principal investigator on a learning assessment project with primary-school children in Aceh, Indonesia, leading primary data collection. She has a joint Erasmus Mundus MSc in Global Development Policy (Hons.) across Palacký University, the University of Clermont Auvergne (UCA), and the University of Pavia. Kayanat holds a BS in Economics from Quaid-i-Azam University, Pakistan.
