Advising graduate students—training people who have hitherto only been consumers of research not only to be producers of research, but to be producers of original, high-quality research having their own impact on scholarship—is one of the most rewarding aspects of my job. As of writing this, I have advised or co-advised 15 PhD students, who have then gone on to accept tenure-track positions at R1 universities or LACs, in the tech sector, or in government.
The following is intended for both current and prospective graduate students.
Current Graduate Students
If you are already one of my graduate students, or if you are a graduate student in the department who is thinking of working with me and would like to know more about my advising style, you can find my advising statement here.
If you need a letter of recommendation, please give me at least two weeks to (find the time to) write and submit it.
See below for details of my advisee lab group.
Prospective Graduate Students
Note (July 2023): I am no longer interested in supervising research on development economics unless the research has a clear connection to food and agriculture. Broadly speaking, I am most interested in supervising students whose research focuses on agricultural economics and policy broadly defined, or on applied econometrics.
I get many emails from prospective students interested in studying with me, so instead of writing the same email over and over, I thought I would post this here.
Our department does not admit students to work with specific faculty members, unlike at some other institutions and in some other disciplines. This means that when I have uncommitted research funds to support you, I cannot tell our grad committee “I want [your name] to be admitted.”
Rather, students apply for admission, they either get admitted on merit or not and, if admitted, they are considered for funding. Funding is scarce, and we have many students who come in without funding. The good news is that most of those eventually find funding, since our grad students are very much in demand across campus as teaching or research assistants in many departments and centers.
Long story short: Please apply! We are always on the lookout for talented students. And if you do get admitted and you decide to come to our department, let’s talk about working together.
Bellemare Research Group (BeRG)
Every one of my advisees or co-advisees at the PhD or Master’s level have to present at least once per semester during the fall and spring semesters in my lab group, BeRG, which meets on Fridays from 9 until 10 AM. BeRG members work on various topics in agricultural, development, and environmental and resource economics.
The purpose of BeRG is fourfold. First, it gives every member a chance to present their work, no matter how early or how advanced, and to get feedback from their peers to improve their research. Second, it gives every member a chance to present just as they would at an invited seminar, and thus improve their presenting skills. Third, it allows member a chance to learn seminar culture, for lack of a better term, and how to be a constructive seminar audience member. Finally, it gives every member a clear deadline by which to make significant progress twice per academic year.
Current BeRG members are:
- Matt Bombyk
- Adriana Castillo Castillo
- Jovin Lasway
- Yanxu Long
- SongYi Paik
- Isabel Pastoor
- Stephen Pitts
- Giang Thai
- Ling Yao
Former BeRG members are:
- Sebastian Anti, Assistant Professor, Bryn Mawr College
- Jeff Bloem, Research Fellow, IFPRI
- Camilo Bohorquez Penuela, Researcher, Central Bank of Colombia
- Chris M. Boyd Leon, Assistant Professor, Towson University
- Bernhard Dalheimer, Assistant Professor, Purdue University
- Berenger Djoumessi Tiague, Research Scientist, Meta
- Johanna Fajardo-Gonzalez, Economist, United Nations Development Programme
- Sinafikeh Gemessa, Postdoctoral Researcher, International Fund for Agricultural Development
- Ibrahim Keita, Instructor, Augsburg University
- Soomin Lee, Associate Research Fellow, Korea Energy Economics Institute
- Yu Na Lee, Assistant Professor, University of Guelph
- Sunghun Lim, Assistant Professor, Louisiana State University
- Jhih-Yun Liu, Assistant Professor, University of Connecticut
- Eva-Marie Meemken, Assistant Professor, ETH-Zürich
- Lindsey Novak, Assistant Professor, Reed College
- Natalia Ordaz Reynoso, Visiting Researcher, Facebook
- Colette Salemi, Assistant Professor, University of Victoria
- Yu Wang, Assistant Professor, Zhejiang University