Sabina Alkire directs the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) and is associate professor of development studies in the Oxford Department of International Development at the University of Oxford. Her research interests include multidimensional poverty measurement and analysis, welfare economics, the capability approach, the measurement of freedoms, and human development. 

Together with James Foster, she developed the Alkire-Foster (AF) method for measuring multidimensional poverty, a flexible technique to create measures tailored to each context. It has been implemented empirically to produce the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), a tool to identify who is poor by considering the range of deprivations they suffer. The MPI is a headline figure of poverty that shows how people are poor nationally as well as by areas and groups, and by each indicator. It is always accompanied by a detailed information platform for policy design.

In 2015–16 Dr. Alkire was the Oliver T. Carr Professor of International Affairs and Professor of Economics at George Washington University. Previously, she worked at the Global Equity Initiative at Harvard University, the UN Commission on Human Security, and the World Bank’s Poverty and Culture Learning and Research Initiative.

She holds a master’s and doctorate in economics from the University of Oxford.