The Forum has the pleasure of announcing that the following people will be the Plenary Speakers for the 2015 Conference.
![Kenneth King UKFIET Conference 2015 BAICE Presidential Address](https://www.ukfiet.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Kenneth-King-UKFIET-Conference-2015-BAICE-Presidential-Address.jpg)
![Rukmini Banerji UKFIET 2015 Conference](https://www.ukfiet.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Rukmini-Banerji-UKFIET-2015-Conference.jpg)
Initially trained as an economist in India, she did her BA at St. Stephen’s College and attended Delhi School of Economics. She was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University and completed her Ph.D at the University of Chicago. She did her post-doctoral work at the Population Research Center at the University of Chicago and later worked as a program officer at the Spencer Foundation in Chicago before returning to India in 1996. Originally from Bihar, Rukmini is now based in Delhi.
Rukmini has led the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) effort since it was launched in 2005. ASER is a nation-wide household survey of children conducted in every year in every rural district in India. It is the only current source of information on children’s ability to read and do arithmetic for the country. ASER has been acknowledged nationally and internationally for its innovativeness in involving citizens and for its impact on education policy and practice.
Rukmini has represented Pratham and ASER Centre at a variety of national and international forums. She is currently a member of the CABE (Central Advisory Board of Education) Committee of the Ministry of Human Resource Development. Government of India. In the past, she has also been a co-chair for the Global Learning Metrics Task Force (convened by the Brookings Institution and UNESCO), a member for the Hewlett Foundation’s advisory group on Quality of Education in Developing Countries, and a member of the international advisory group for the Think Tank Initiative.
![Stefan Dercon UKFIET Conference 2015](https://www.ukfiet.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Stefan-Dercon-UKFIET-Conference-2015.jpg)
Stefan Dercon’s research has emphasized the application of microeconomics and statistics to the analysis of development problems. He has published in top general and field journals in economics and other disciplines on diverse topics, including risk and poverty, the foundations of growth in poor societies, agriculture and rural institutions, migration, political economy, childhood poverty, social and geographic mobility, micro-insurance, and measurement issues related to poverty and vulnerability. He has worked extensively in Ethiopia, Tanzania and India.
At DFID, he is responsible for strategy and research, especially on the economic aspects of development, and for the use of evidence to improve the quality of development policy design and evaluation across a wide range of development issues.