Adrienne McManus

Adrienne is a DPhil student in Social Policy and a Centenary Scholar at the Department of Social Policy and Intervention (DSPI). She is also a member of St Antony’s College. In her research, Adrienne explores social welfare attitudes in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic; she is particularly interested in labour market and transfer-based social policy. She is supervised by Dr Tim Vlandas.  

Prior to her DPhil studies, Adrienne spent nearly 5 years at the World Bank in Washington DC as a consultant (analyst) working on pandemic preparedness (Global) and health system strengthening (Eastern Europe). Adrienne was a member of the Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility (PEF) team, and participated in several World Bank Task Forces, most recently, the World Bank’s COVID-19 Emergency Operations Centre and the COVID-19 Vaccines Delivery Task Force. Adrienne has provided technical assistance in Bangladesh and Viet Nam, and contributed to several World Bank knowledge products.  

Adrienne holds a Dual MSc in Public Policy and Human Development from the United Nations University-Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute (UNU-MERIT) and the Maastricht Graduate School of Governance (MGSoG). There, she specialized in Social Protection Policy Design and Financing. Her master’s research involved using micro-simulation to explore the distributional impacts on poverty and inequality of a Scandinavian-type welfare state reform in two different welfare state contexts, the United States and Germany. She also holds a BComm from University College Dublin, following which she worked with two Start-up companies in Dublin, Ireland.