Dr. Leila Dagher

Assistant to the President for Public Policy

Dr. Leila Dagher joined LAU in September 2023 as Assistant to the President for Public Policy and as Associate Professor of Economics at the Adnan Kassar School of Business.

Dr. Dagher is tasked with setting up the new Center for Policy Analysis, an advanced think tank rallying internal and external experts. To that end, she is developing the center’s operational framework and organizing full- and part-time memberships for faculty and external experts in collaboration with other senior university officers.

She will also build and expand the university’s network of contributors to the center within and outside of LAU and develop internal and external grant proposals alongside other units, such as the Graduate Studies and Research Office, Grants and Contracts, Finance and faculty.

Dr. Dagher has been an adjunct lecturer at George Washington University since 2016 and currently serves as an editor for Energy Policy and on the editorial boards of Finance Research Letters and Utilities Policy. She is a Senior Fellow at the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies, a Research Fellow at the Economic Research Forum, and sits on the steering committee of the Mashreq Gender Facility. Dr. Dagher previously served in various capacities; Economic Adviser to several public officials including the former Prime Minister, Director of the Institute of Financial Economics at the American University of Beirut (AUB), and Chairperson of the Department of Economics at AUB.

Dr. Dagher is a regular participant in academic and policy debates. Her research applies her econometric knowledge to the areas of energy, environmental, and financial economics with a focus on producing policy-relevant studies. She has published more than 25 peer-reviewed articles. Her work has appeared in leading academic journals such as the Energy Journal, Resources Policy, and Energy Economics as well as more widely accessible forums.

Dr. Dagher received her Bachelor of Engineering from AUB and her PhD in Mineral Economics from the Colorado School of Mines. Before joining LAU, she was an AUB faculty member for 15 years with several visiting stints at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, among others.

View Dr. Dagher’s CV

Contact:

Dr. Leila Dagher
Assistant to the President for Public Policy
Lebanese American University

Tel: +961-1-786456, Ext. 3136
leiladagher@lau.edu.lb