Jillian Dyszynski

Jillian Dyszynski is a Research Fellow at the SEI office in Oxford, England. She holds an MSc in Environmental Change and Management from the University of Oxford. Her thematic areas of work include the sustainability and scalability of drought index-based microinsurance in Ethiopia, the economics of climate change in Africa, and the development of Rwanda’s national climate change and low carbon development strategy (NCCLCD).
Project roles in climate economics from 2008 to 2011 primarily involved coordination and research for the “Economics of climate change in East Africa” project supported by DFID. Work involved coordination of three national-level studies assessing the costs of climate change impacts, adaptation and low-carbon growth in Burundi, Kenya and Rwanda in 2008-2009.
This was complimented by a follow-on study on the “Economics of climate change and low carbon growth in Tanzania” in 2010-2011. For the Africa-wide “AdaptCost” study, Jillian facilitated regional and country-level engagement with African economists through economics workshops and writeshops, whilst leading research on agriculture and water sector components.
From 2010 to present, Jillian has worked on secondment to the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment under the University of Oxford as a Research Associate to the Rwanda NCCLCD project supported by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN). As an in-country RA living and working in Kigali, Rwanda, roles ranged from the leading research and policy recommendations for Rwanda’s forest and tree-based systems sector, to support establishing a national Climate and Environment Fund with the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, as well as mainstreaming climate resilience and low-carbon considerations into Rwanda’s national development plans and institutional arrangements.
In September 2008, Jillian joined SEI after completing her MSc in Environmental Change and Management at the University of Oxford. Her dissertation work explored a robust decision making (RDM) methodology in the context of scaling sustainable drought index-based microinsurance in Ethiopia. This work was supported by SEI’s Risk, Livelihoods and Vulnerability (RLV) programme. Prior to masters studies, she worked as a research assistant at the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in Arlington, Virginia tracking US climate policy at the state-level.

Joined 2010

Organisation

SEI