Blair Read

Research Specialist

Blair Read is a Research Specialist with MIT GOV/LAB. She recently received her Ph.D. in Political Science at MIT, where her research focused on the politics of private service delivery with an application to education policy in the Global South. Her dissertation examined the formation and expansion of public service sectors, focusing on political decisions to outsource education to private providers in India. Other areas of research include comparative political behavior, survey design and measurement, and the politics of development in South Asia. She also serves as an Associate Fellow with the Office of Evaluation Sciences, where she helps federal agencies design and evaluate interventions rooted in behavioral science. She is also a Visiting Data Science Fellow at Code for America, where she uses data science and quantitative methodologies to evaluate Code for America’s impact on access to the social safety net in the United States.