picture of Sharnic Djaker

Sharnic Djaker

Sharnic Djaker is a Research Associate with the RISE India team and a doctoral student in the Psychology and Social Intervention programme at New York University’s Applied Psychology Department. His research examines teacher and parental perceptions of student ability, and their effects on student achievement, aspirations, and motivations in low-income contexts. His current research portfolio includes studies on documenting teachers’ knowledge on student ability; and the psychological effects of ability - grouping in classrooms. Additionally, he is also currently working on multiple field experiments with Alejandro Ganimian, Mauricio Romero, Abhijeet Singh, and Karthik Muralidharan to evaluate education programmes in developing countries.


Prior to joining NYU, Sharnic was a research associate at J-PAL South Asia where he coordinated a large-scale field experiment in Tamil Nadu, India to evaluate programmes on improving school preparedness and nutrition levels of pre-school children. He has also consulted for the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) in the past. He holds a master’s degree in Education and International Development from University College London (UCL), and a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Shiv Nadar University, India. Sharnic is fluent in English, Tamil and Hindi.