Biography
Dr. Laura Rahm is Associate Researcher at the Centre for Population and Development (CEPED), Paris, and a Visiting Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute (EUI), Florence. She holds a PhD in Political Sociology/Demography from Sorbonne University, where she lectured on Population and Development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Her research examines how knowledge, data, and policy interact to shape development outcomes, focusing on knowledge transfer, global governance, and public policies addressing gender, population, and harmful practices toward women and girls. She was previously a Policy Leader Fellow and Jean Monnet Fellow at the EUI, and a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Research Fellow leading the GlobalKnoT project on knowledge transfer in global gender programmes at the Central European University and the University of Toronto. She has collaborated for over 10 years with UN Women, UNICEF, UNFPA, and the World Bank on evaluating the SDGs through a gender lens, including as Reference Group Member for a UN-wide SDG 5 evaluation synthesis (2022–2024). Her research appears in Nature Sustainability, Population and Development Review, PLOS One, and BMJ Sexual & Reproductive Health. She is the author of two monographs, including The Global Governance of Harmful Practices (Bristol University Press, 2026, open access).