Nematullah Bizhan is an Oxford-Princeton Global leaders Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Global Economic Governance Program and a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University’s Crawford School of Public Policy. His areas of academic interest and expertise include the political economy of state building and state–society relations, development, comparative politics, post-conflict transition and reconstruction, public health, and government accountability.

His research at Princeton University focused on an historical paired comparison of state building and development in South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Colombia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. His current research at University of Oxford examines how state revenue sources shape state formation. He is completing a book about the state building effects of foreign aid in post 9/11 Afghanistan.

He has contributed to post-2001 Afghanistan’s development and state-building efforts and to civil society initiatives, such as the development of Afghanistan’s National Priority Programs, Budget Reform, Development Cooperation efforts, Afghanistan National Development Strategy, Afghanistan Compact and national monitoring system, as well as in promoting accountability and widening the youth and civic participation in decision making process. He has served as Afghanistan’s Youth Deputy Minister; Founding Director General for Policy and Monitoring of Afghanistan Development Strategy; head of the secretariat for the Joint Coordination and Monitoring Board; and Acting Director General of Budget at the Ministry of Finance.