Soufia’s work is anchored in broad-spectrum qualitative research methods that can help explain the political economy of educational experience in the Pakistani context. Specifically, she investigates how system design engenders inefficiencies and frictions that contribute to contested notions of identity in sites of learning, and their implications for effective service delivery.
This theme informs two of her current projects. The first is a qualitative investigation she leads into Pakistani public school teacher motivation and identity as part of the Research on Improving Systems of Education (RISE) Programme’s Political Economy component housed at the University of Pennsylvania. The second is a process tracing exploration she co-leads into how delivery models are constructed and enacted by elite public education decision-makers as part of the Pakistan team for Lahore-based think tank IDEAS and its global partners, The Education Commission and the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford.
Previously, Soufia was Technical Advisor to the School Education Department, Punjab where she worked on key policy initiatives with the government, including developing a 5-year roadmap for the province’s most urgent reform needs. This project payed special attention to the need for a coherent learning outcomes dataset as well as governance strategies for whole-system improvement. She was also a member of the Punjab Examination Commission, where she led the Technical Committee for the province’s 2019 Assessment Policy Framework and, between 2015 and 2018, a research advisor to Alif Ailaan, Pakistan’s first education advocacy campaign.
Dr Siddiqi was Pakistan’s 2010 Rhodes Scholar to the University of Oxford, where she read for a DPhil Education (2017) and MSc Comparative and International Education (2011) at St. Anne’s College. Her first degree is in Economics from Government College University Lahore.
