Seoni is a doctoral candidate in Development Economics at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies. She is currently working as a teaching assistant for the courses “Statistical Methods for Social Science,” and “Advanced Quantitative Methods.” Her research mainly centers around applied development microeconomics on conflicts and civil wars, agriculture, and health. In her thesis, she examines the impacts of violent conflicts on agricultural production, and the risk-mitigating strategies of rural farmers in Burundi using the nationwide plot-level agronomic data combined with the geo-referenced conflict data.

She completed her BA in Education and Master in International Studies at the Seoul National University, and MA in International Economics at the Graduate Institute. Prior to coming to Geneva, she had extensive professional experiences in public and private sectors in Cameroon and Korea. She was a secondary school teacher in Korea, managed a mobile money project in Cameroon, and then worked as a business analyst at LG CNS. She also worked as a researcher at the Korea-Africa Center under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Korean government, and as a consultant for the World Health Organization.