Justine Knebelmann joined the Department in September 2024 as an Assistant Professor (tenure track). Prior to joining Sciences Po, she was a 3-year Postdoctoral Associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Lab (J-PAL). She is an Invited Researcher at J-PAL today and an Associate at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).

Her research fields are Development and Public Economics, and her work is mostly centred around state capacity in developing countries. She notably works on tax policies and land issues and has been working with tax administrations in Sub-Saharan Africa since 2015 (read article in Le Monde, August 9th 2025). In July 2025 the Agence nationale de la recherche (ANR) announced that it was awarding her a grant in the framework of its young researcher programme for her project State Capacity and Digitization in Africa (AFREGOV).

Justine Knebelmann holds a PhD in Economics from the Paris School of Economics. She is also a graduate in Economics from the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon.

To learn more about Justine Knebelmann's research, consult her website

ANR project AFREGOV (State Capacity and Digitaization in Africa)

• Denis Cogneau, Yannick Dupraz, Justine Knebelmann, Sandrine Mesplé-Somps. Taxation in Africa from Colonial Times to Present Evidence from former French colonies 1900-2018. 2021. ⟨halshs-03420664⟩