Profiles

Sarah Cook
Former Director (Former title)
Sarah Cook is the Director of UNICEF’s Office of Research-Innocenti in Florence, Italy. An economist and China specialist, her research has focused primarily on China's social and economic transformations, including work on labour and migration, poverty, inequality, social policy and gender. From 2009-2015 she was the Director, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) in Geneva, where she led the Institute in developing its 2016-2020 strategy on ‘Transformations to Equity and Sustainability’. Her engagement in China has spanned the period from the mid-1980s, including 5 years as the Ford Foundation’s Programme Officer in Beijing (2000-2005) where she led the Foundation’s initiatives on economics, governance and gender. From 1996-2009 she was a Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex. Sarah received her PhD from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, an M.Sc. from the London School of Economics and her BA from Oxford University.