Dr Ingrid Nascimento Aguiar Schlindwein

Ingrid is currently a USAWA postdoctoral fellow at SOAS University of London’s Department of Development Studies. She has recently concluded a Joint PhD programme in International Relations at King’s College London and the University of São Paulo. At SOAS, she has carried research about foreign investment for infrastructure projects in developing countries. 

Ingrid’s PhD thesis is entitled ‘The World Bank and its upper-middle- income (UMIC) members: convening power and knowledge diffusion’. It investigated the relationship between the World Bank and upper-middle-income countries, such as Brazil, as its largest recipients of funds. I explore the World Bank’s business model and its strategies to explain its focus on lending to its major middle- income members. In addition, the thesis has looked at how the Bank uses its material and ideological power as instruments for spreading a developmental agenda. The methodologies involved document analysis, elite interviews with senior staff from the Bank, and an in-depth analysis of the case study of Brazil’s Bolsa Família Program, in which the World Bank worked with the Brazilian administration to improve the design of the program. 

Prior to her PhD, Ingrid has worked in the public sector in Brazil as an international cooperation advisor at the Government of Sao Paulo's foreign office. She was also an intern at the United Nations Secretariat, in New York, and at Caritas Brazil, assisting asylum seekers in their legal claims.

Ingrid’s research interests are related to political economy, development aid and finance, international financial institutions, financialisation, Latin America and other emerging countries’ economy and public policy.