Sonia Bhalotra is a Professor of Economics at the University of Essex.

Her research uses micro-data, often longitudinal, from the UK, several developing countries and early twentieth century America, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. She is interested in the creation of human capital, early childhood development, the long benefits of early life health interventions, gender inequality, the political economy of public service provision, intergenerational mobility and the dynamics of mortality, fertility and sex selection.

She is Principal Investigator on a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant, Co-Investigator and Co-Director of the ESRC Centre for Microsocial Change (housed in the Institute for Social and Economic Research) and Co-Investigator on an ESRC-funded Programme on Human Rights, Big Data and Technology (based in the Human Rights Centre in Law), both at Essex. She was recently a Principal Investigator on a large Grand Challenges Canada award on early life risk factors and cognitive development, in a consortium hosted by the University of Pennsylvania. She currently also holds other research awards from the Economic and Social Research Council (UK), the RCUK-Newton fund, the British Academy, the Bank of Sweden Research Department and the International Growth Centre. She is working with a team running a follow up of a randomized control trial funded by the National Institute of Health USA.