Francis Touola Meda will be pursuing a PhD in politics at New York University starting in the fall of 2017. Francis explains that his acceptance demonstrates “the international recognition of ASE’s effectiveness in producing top-tier students in the social sciences”. He adds: “I was a mathematician before joining ASE. This school gave me a strong quantitative analysis background, and now I am doing political Economy”.

Francis cited the prestige of the university and the quality of its professors in political economy as his motivations for selecting NYU. In addition, ASE President Leonard Wantchekon has a strong connection to NYU, where he worked as a professor in the Politics department from 2001 to 2011. For his thesis work, Francis was advised by Prof. Wantchekon, and extended his previous work on elections in situations where there is the threat of violence.

Francis came to ASE from Cameroon, and graduated from ASE in December 2016. In ASE’s pre-doctoral fellows program for top ASE graduates, he prepared for the GRE and TOEFL exams and wrote his applications to PhD programs in the US and Canada. He has also been involved with IERPE’s research projects on girls’ education and supplementary mathematics courses for girls in secondary schools. After completing his graduate studies, he hopes to use his training to be at the forefront of innovative leadership in Africa.