Asha Sundaram is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Economics, University of Auckland and co-director of the NZ APEC Study Centre.   She has an M.Phil in Economics from the University of Oxford, UK and a PhD in Economics from Syracuse University, USA.  Her research on trade and development issues has been published in top journals, in books published by Oxford University Press and in the research-based policy analysis portals such as VoxEU and VoxDev.  She has been a visiting research scholar at Stanford, Columbia, Michigan, Ann-Arbor and the Centre for Advanced Financial Research and Learning (CAFRAL), at the Reserve Bank of India.  She has consulted for international organizations like the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East-Asia (ERIA). She has collaborated with government ministries and institutes in South Africa, Ethiopia and New Zealand. Her commentary on trade and policy issues has appeared in media outlets like the BBC, Al Jazeera, Politico, Newsroom, New Zealand Herald, Newshub and Radio New Zealand.