Eleonora Nillesen is research fellow at the United Nations Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (UNU-MERIT). She holds a Ph.D. in development economics from Wageningen University, the Netherlands. Her research interests include the impact of violent conflict on socio-economic indicators and institutional change, with a particular focus on rural households in Sub-saharan Africa. She has published on these topics in international peer reviewed journals, including the American Economic Review and the Journal of Development Economics. Eleonora is currently involved in several research projects in Liberia, DR Congo  and Kyrgystan, organizing field experiments in collaboration with (inter)national NGOs to assess the effectiveness of various type of development interventions.