ILANA SEFF
Academic Advisor
Research Associate Professor, Bursky School of Public Health, Washington University in St. Louis
Dr. Ilana Seff serves as an academic advisor to the RSRI. Alongside her colleague, Dr. Lindsay Stark, she supports learning and evaluation related to refugee self-reliance and the Self-Reliance Index (SRI).
Dr. Ilana Seff is a Research Associate Professor at Washington University in St. Louis, where her work focuses on forced displacement, self-reliance, gender-based violence, mental health, and the design and evaluation of programs that support well-being and stability among refugee, migrant, and crisis-affected populations. Ilana has worked with the RSRI since 2018, contributing to the development, validation, and ongoing analysis of the SRI. In this role, she has helped advance the use of multi-country self-reliance data to support learning, adaptive management, and program dialogue among refugee-serving organizations, donors, and other stakeholders. Her work with RSRI examines how displaced households build stability over time, how self-reliance relates to wellbeing and safety, and how humanitarian and development actors can better understand the conditions that support sustainable, dignified outcomes.
For more than a decade, Ilana has led and supported research and learning partnerships across humanitarian and low-resource settings, with a focus on translating evidence into practical guidance for programs and policy. She has collaborated with partners including UNICEF, the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, the World Bank, NIH, NGOs, and civil society organizations to design mixed-methods studies, strengthen measurement approaches, and generate evidence that can inform program adaptation and scale. She has authored and co-authored more than 80 peer-reviewed publications and public-facing pieces on forced displacement, self-reliance, mental health, gender-based violence, and humanitarian programming.
Ilana holds a Doctor of Public Health from Columbia University, a Master of Public Health from George Washington University, and a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from the University of Florida.
