Dr. Swati Mehta Dhawan is a development sector researcher and consultant with 15 years of progressive experience advising financial service providers, international development organizations, and governments on inclusive finance. She earned her bachelor’s degree in economics in 2007 from Shri Ram College of Commerce, University of Delhi, and completed her post-graduate diploma in forest management with a major in development management from the Indian Institute of Forest Management, Bhopal. In January 2023, she earned a PhD in economic geography from the Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Germany.
Dr. Dhawan’s research interests are primarily in the fields of digital financial inclusion, women’s economic empowerment, financial capability, and consumer protection in the context of global phenomena such as migration, climate change, and digitalization. Her work spans developing market economies in Asia and Africa. Her doctoral research focused on understanding the financial lives of refugees and asylum seekers. She has published several research articles in reputed international journals. She received the Microfinance Research Award 2018 at the European Microfinance Network for her research in Germany.
As a Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Research Fellow Dr. Dhawan is working closely with the leading researchers in this field, Prof. Katrina Burgess, a Professor of Political Economy and Director of the Henry J. Leir Institute of Human Security, and Prof. Kim Wilson, senior lecturer in Human Security at The Fletcher School. Dr. Dhawan is exploring how newly arrived immigrants in the US use informal, formal, and digitized financial systems to optimize their incomes, build assets, and improve their financial health.