The Stone Center Announces Its Seventh Cohort of Postdoctoral Scholars

A seventh cohort of postdoctoral scholars will join the Stone Center for two-year appointments that begin in August 2025. Naomi Crowther was selected for the position that focuses on wealth inequality and is affiliated with the GC Wealth Project. Marai Hayes was selected for the position that broadly focuses on socio-economic inequalities.

Naomi Crowther is an economist who researches issues of gendered wealth inequality alongside the intergenerational and multidimensional effects of forced displacement. Her current research examines land restitution to formerly displaced people and contributes to extending economic theory of property rights in post-conflict settings. Additionally, she is investigating the role of inheritance in perpetuating gendered wealth inequalities. She has more than ten years of experience working in the international development field, including for the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. She is expected to receive her Ph.D. in economics from Trinity College Dublin this spring.

Marai Hayes is an economist whose research examines how health shapes the trajectory of economic outcomes over the life course, and the potential for health and social policies to address inequities in health and economic opportunity. Her current work investigates the role of childhood health on the trajectory of labor market and wealth outcomes from early adulthood to old age as well as the long-term economic effects of major public health interventions in the U.S. Future research focus areas include the intergenerational transmission of health and socioeconomic status and its effects on lifelong economic inequality. She is expected to receive her Ph.D. in health policy from Harvard University in May.

“We are delighted that Naomi Crowther and Marai Hayes will join our team this fall,” said Janet Gornick, director of the Stone Center. “Each cycle, we aim to select two postdocs who will contribute to our ongoing mix of research and, at the same time, help us to incorporate new lines of work. Naomi’s innovative work on the distributional impacts of post-conflict land policy and gender wealth disparities will add value to the work of the GC Wealth Project team. Marai will bring a great deal to the Stone Center, especially her exciting research on the intersection of health and labor markets, which includes work on the long-term effects of childhood health on earnings and wealth. Naomi and Marai constitute our seventh cohort, bringing the total number of Stone Center postdocs so far to fourteen.”

Crowther and Hayes will join the Center’s sixth cohort of postdoctoral scholars, who started their two-year terms in September 2024: Zhexun Mo, whose research focuses on the intersection of political economics, development, and economic history; and Severin Rapp, who works on wealth inequality and intergenerational transfers.

The Stone Center’s postdoctoral scholars program is funded by a multi-year gift from the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Foundation. The gift has allowed the Center to add two new postdocs a year since September 2019, in addition to other initiatives.

For a full list of the Stone Center’s current and former postdoctoral scholars, and more information about the program, see our Postdoctoral Scholars page.