Veni grant for Kritika Saxena

Kritika Saxena has received a Veni grant of 320,000 euros from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). The postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Economics and Business’ Department of Economics, Econometrics and Finance was awarded the grant for her research on women’s land rights and economic agency in Rwanda.

Kritika Saxena’s research focuses on applied microeconomics, impact evaluation, and gender, examining how policies and cultural contexts shape women's empowerment and demographic outcomes in developing countries. Her Veni project delves into women’s land ownership in Rwanda. For centuries across Africa, women farmed land they were excluded from owning. Rwanda made an ambitious attempt to change this, granting formal land titles nationwide and allowing women to inherit and own land for the first time. Yet, in her ongoing work, she finds that women's reported land ownership has since declined sharply.

In her project, Kritika investigates whether these formal rights translate into lasting economic empowerment and real decision-making power over land, or whether traditional norms reassert control over time. Combining household surveys, administrative land records, and satellite data, her research traces this question across more than a decade of reform. With it’s findings, the project aims to inform land governance and gender policy in Rwanda, across Sub-Saharan Africa, and within Dutch development cooperation.

Complicated, real-world effects of policies

Previously, Kritika was awarded a research grant from the ReCIPE program, managed by the CEPR - Centre for Economic Policy Research and funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. The grant supported a project studying land reforms, women’s empowerment and conflict in Rwanda. This Veni grant will allow her to continue this line of research and examine women’s land rights in detail. Kritika says: “Over the next four years, I will investigate why women's reported land ownership in Rwanda declined sharply despite a nationwide reform granting them equal inheritance and ownership rights. This is exactly the kind of puzzle that drew me to development economics: policies that look successful on paper, but whose real effects on people's lives are far more complicated. I am immensely grateful to my friends, family, and colleagues for their unwavering support along the way.”

Veni Grant

Veni Grants are intended for newly promoted researchers, to fund innovative scientific research and thereby give these researchers the opportunity to develop as independent researchers. Alongside the Vidi and Vici grants, the Veni grant is part of the NWO Talent Programme. Within this programme, researchers are free to submit their own topics for funding.

Questions? Please contact Kritika Saxena.